24: Is There Hope Left?
by Melodic
Summary: This is a story based mainly on Bill Buchanan, Chloe O'Brien, Morris O'Brien, and Curtis Manning. The story is set not too long after season 5 Chloe is still trying to come to terms with the events of day five, but CTU isn't going to stop for that. R
1. Prologue

Prologue

It was dark and quite, there wasn't much around. The terrain was rough, but insight there were lights from far of cities on both sides of a new, strong, chain-linked fence. The fence was usually heavily guarded, but tonight a particular section was not guarded, thanks to a mutual friend of the people who were going to meet there.

A dark haired tall lady sat in her black, bullet-proof, blacked-out windowed, SUV. A well built man dressed in a black t-shirt and black pants sat in the driver's seat. After a while another car pulled up about 30 feet away. The woman motioned for her body guard to stay where he was as she opened the car door just as the car door opened of the car facing them. The occupant of the other car was a man. They walked towards each other, staring each other in the eye for a while, and then the woman spoke, "I think they're close to finding me, I don't think I shall be around much longer."  
"I'm sorry to hear that." He replied to her dryly, but at the same time meaningfully.

"Have you got everything? Is everybody ready?"

"Yes we'll be ready in time. We have all the recourses we need, thanks to you." He added with a smile. "And yes, everyone is in play, err ... the recourse you sent me has turned out to be very helpful."

"I'm glad." She said looking up at him as his smile became infectious and spread to her face. "Well I have to say _dasvadanya, _I don't think we shall meet again." She said holding her head up high her short lived smile now gone. He then lent in too her and kissed her gently on the lips. They smiled at each other, joyful smiles. In there minds was about what both of them were about to achieve as well as the time they had spent together. Very quickly though the smile on there faces fell and was replaced by a serious look. They nodded at each other in agreement and walked back to their cars.


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Talking, the humming of computers, four-toned rings of many phones, clattering of heels; these were the sounds of CTU, or the Counter Terrorism Unit of Los Angeles.

Head Analyst Chloe O'Brian was quickly making her way up the stairs to the SAC's office (or the Special Agent in Charge) where Bill Buchanan was. As she burst through the glass door Bill spun around in his chair and put his hand up to signal her to wait as he finished off on the phone. He finished off his call quickly. Chloe's face looked urgent almost as if she'd burst if she didn't tell him any second now. Bill put the receiver down. Straight away Chloe rushed to his desk saying, "Sir, we got a hit on Johnson, he's classed as high priority on our watch list."

"I know Chloe, where was he spotted?" Bill asked. Chloe put down her touch screen laptop, and clicked on a photo of the man Johnson.

"It was about a week ago in Los Angles."

Bill quickly interjected, "Why wasn't I told about this before?"

"Because I didn't know," Chloe scowled almost, but caught herself; she was trying not to do that. "The picture was only taken because the man he's talking with was being watched, but they didn't know that Johnson was also a high priority. It took a while to process and find out it was him."

"Do we know where he might be now?"

"We believe he's still in Los Angles."

Bill had put on his glasses staring at the picture of the two people. He was already a bit tired, he'd been at work 5 hours, but he knew he had a long day ahead of him now. "Is there anymore information Chloe?"

"Yes Mr. Buchanan," Chloe clicked on an icon bringing up another photograph. "This is another picture we were given of Johnson; it's about two and a half weeks old."

"Who's that with him?"

"That's Lydia Iovita; she's a weapons dealer with certain political motives to which groups she sells too. She was also under watch at the time, she's now in custody."

"Where is she?"

"There bring her back to the U.S. but I don't know where."

"Right," Bill sighed, "Chloe I want you to put more of your people on monitoring chatter for any help with pending attacks."

"Why pending?" Chloe looked at him confused, but her face looked more screwed up like she was looking at a crazy man. Bill slightly shook his head knowing that she didn't mean anything by it.

"We're closing in on his people; he'll be looking for help."

Bill's phone did a four-toned ring. "Right Chloe, get to it." He said nodding her toward the door. "Oh, and try to find Johnson's last known address in L.A., get Morris to get me a satellite feed from there, OK?"

"Ok, Mr. Buchanan." Chloe grabbed her laptop and her stylus just as Bill picked up the phone. "Buchanan" Chloe heard as she shut the door and made her way down the stairs to the Bullpen.

Chloe went into the bullpen and called Taylor, Amy, and Holly to her station. "I need you three to monitor chatter for any pending attacks OK?" Chloe said looking harassed.

"I can do my job Chloe, I don't need two other people to help me I can do it. Actually I can do much more than that; I'm qualified to do much more complicated work than that." Holly said with anger and outrage sketched on her face. Holly was a small Caucasian woman who was a bit younger than Chloe with fair features and dark red hair platted back with two bits sticking out at the front. Before district had moved her too L.A. she had the same job as Chloe in the Miami branch. Nobody seemed to know why she had been moved across the country and demoted, but Chloe seemed to think that no one could cope with her annoyingness.

"Look, Holly, Mr. Buchanan wants this done so just do your job, and stop being so big headed. OK?" Chloe said giving her a sideways scowl. Holly huffed and went to sit back at her desk, Taylor and Amy following her to their seats near her. Chloe sat in her seat with a thud and a sigh. _Why did people have to be so annoying? Ugh._ She pressed her pad controlling her webcam and called up Morris even thought he was only sat a few stations away. Morris' face came on the small screen, "Morris, Mr. Buchanan wants you to find out Johnson's last know address and bring up a satellite feed." Morris had been rehired on a permanent basis to CTU thanks to Chloe persuading Bill that they needed him after Edger's passing. Chloe had taken Edger's death and Jacks kidnapping hard and needed Morris there to help her, and Bill had realized this.

"Alright," Morris said then he looked at his screen as he'd been staring at the monitor when he had answered. He saw Chloe's face and walked over to her station. She looked up from her screen and into his eyes; she was a bit uncomfortable with the way he was looking at her. "Are you ok Chloe? Because erm you don't really look it. Did something happen up there?" He said looking up to where Bill was pacing up and down whilst on the phone. He knew that Holly wouldn't bother Chloe that much.  
"I was just showing Mr. Buchanan that alert we had from the watch list;" Chloe knew that she couldn't just shrug off Morris, she didn't even want to, "but it's just like every time we start a new task we're getting further away from ever finding Jack. He didn't do anything wrong, he shouldn't be in prison, we should be trying to get him back, Morris." Chloe's eyes were getting bigger and bigger as she spoke.

"Look Love, I know and I agree with you, but Mr. Buchanan has done everything he can for Jack, and President Palmers going to try to do what he can as soon as he gets settled in office. There's nothing we can do, Darling."  
"I just feel like we should be out there looking for him."  
Morris cut her off "You would never find him there, we need you here Chloe, I need you here." He paused for a moment and just looked at her; he just wished she would show that she felt the same way that he felt about her. Then he carried on, "Anyway Audrey is out there looking for him, you know that."

"I guess your right." Chloe said sighing.

"You know I am, Darling, as I always am." A wry smile crept across Morris face. He walked over to his station and started a search to find Johnson's address.

Chloe sat there thinking for a moment, Morris was right she wasn't going to get him back by herself, not even with the help of Buchanan. Chloe's mind kept wandering back to the day Jack had been kidnapped and Buchanan asked her to phone Kim. Morris was taking her home when Bill had phoned up telling her about Jack then asking her to phone Kim as she knew her best. Chloe was feeling like she was about to go into shock, but held herself together to phone Kim. Kim had just got off her plane with Barry. When Chloe had told her Kim seemed puzzled but indifferent, then all of a sudden she broke down crying almost in hysterics. Chloe had found it very hard not to join in with Kim. Chloe thought that Jack might be able to stay round, but she was wrong. She felt like she had lost two of her best friends in one day, even though Jack had been thought dead before that day, Chloe had had the most contact with him, though very occasional. Well maybe Morris was right maybe she would never hear Jack's voice again. She kept wondering to herself; _Is there hope left? _

Her phone began to ring, she quite liked the four-toned ring, though it could easily add to the tension that always seemed to surround the place like a duvet made of lead. She then snapped out of her thoughts and grabbed the phone. "O'Brian"

"It's Bill we're having a department heads meeting now in the situation room."

"Ok I'll be there in a minute." Chloe then headed over to Morris' station on her way to the situation room. "Have you got the feed yet?" Chloe asked.

"No there something wrong with our surveillance. I can't get anything for 6 blocks around that address. It could be just a technical fault. I'm just going to check some more problems it could be." Morris said looking complexly confused at his monitor.

"Right Morris let me know as soon as you know what the problem is. Ok?"

"Yea, I will."  
Chloe would of took the task straight of someone else, but knew if anyone could find out what was wrong it was Morris. Anyway it could just be one of their servers playing up, but it was a bit wired.

Chloe stepped into the conference room, as she realized that Bill, Curtis, and everyone else had been waiting for her. She kept her head down and entered. She took a seat a couple of seats away from Curtis sitting with her back to the window.

"Right know we're all here, I'll tell you why I called this meeting. I got a call from Division; they got some files off Iovita's computer." Bill said as the image of Iovita and Johnson came up on the screen. "Division has decided to share these files with us." Bill said showing his anger in his face for a moment, but then he rained it in. Bill knew getting angry didn't help Division in being more open with information they needed. "There's a particular document on her computer which was encrypted, it contains the weapons bought by different clients and some of there details. Of course there are no names. So Chloe I need you to start to cross-check the details of all her clients to the details we have on Johnson and see if you can find a match. If we can find a match then maybe we'll know what we're up against." Chloe got out of her chair and turned around. Bill still looking at the screen with the image on called out to Chloe, "Bring your laptop in here so you can be in the rest of the meeting, and tell me when Morris can put the feed on the screens, he's taking longer than usual." Just as Chloe heard what Bill said she saw out of the window Morris leaning over Amy trying to "help" her with a task that she was probably more than capable of, even though Chloe knew she was a little slow and thick-headed surely she didn't need Morris' help. Morris hadn't changed over night and that was why Chloe wasn't about to go-out with him like he wanted her too. Morris as soon as he saw Chloe walked back to his desk. Chloe walked over too her desk in the bullpen and grabbed her laptop, but as she was passing Morris' desk back toward the situation room he whistled at her too come over to him, "Darling, come and have a look at this." He beckoned her and she went over to him. "What is it Morris? I need to get back in there, and I'm pretty sure Amy can do her job without you holding her hand." She said with an annoyed impatient tone.

"It was a matter of efficiency, like I've told you before; she isn't the brightest bulb now is she." Morris was now gesturing with his hands. "I think we have a problem a bit bigger than Amy now ok. I'm pretty sure someone is hacking into our system,"

"Are you sure?" Chloe said slightly shocked. "Let me see." Morris moved slightly so she could see the screen better as she leant in to see the code better.

"They're messing with our satellite coverage and schematics of houses in that region. I can't see where it's coming from they're covering their tracks well. It could be coming from anywhere."

"We better phone Mr. Buchanan." As soon as she'd said that Chloe could feel Buchanan's eyes boring into her. She quickly turned around and saw people were filtering out. Chloe turned back to Morris, and picked up the phone. After the first four-toned ring Bill picked up. He spoke first, "I'll be there in a moment Chloe." He put the phone straight down, he didn't sound too happy.  
Bill called Curtis back just as he was about to carry-on walking out with everybody else. "Curtis." Bill almost shouted. Curtis walked back towards Bill.

"Yeah Bill, what's up?"

"I want you to get a TAC team ready to move out. I'm just going to get the address of Morris and I'll phone you with the coordinates. Ok?"

"Yeah ok I'm on it." Curtis got out his mobile to call Alpha team into action.

Bill walked divisively towards the station where Chloe and Morris where. Bill liked Chloe she worked hard and was dependable, but he was still not comfortable working with Morris yet. Chloe had sat at a station next to Morris working up the data Bill had sent her on her laptop, but was still keeping an eye on Morris moniter.

"What's going on here? Because if you too are arguing which is what it looked like to me from over there your both out of the door!"

Chloe answered first while Morris kept his head down, "Mr. Buchanan it's nothing like that Morris told me before he was having trouble with the satellite coverage, and now he knows why." Bill turned to look at Morris with a slightly more relaxed face than before, but he was expecting a very good answer.

"Mr. Buchanan I believe, and Chloe agrees with me, that someone has hacked into CTU's satellite coverage we can't get anything for six blocks around his house or schematics for that fact." Morris said passing a piece of notepad paper with Johnson's last known address scribbled on it to Bill. Bill immediately phoned Curtis and told Curtis too phone him when he arrived.

"He's trying to mess with us," Bill said half to himself, "Have you decided whether it was an internal or external breach."

"No," Morris said slightly confused that Bill had thought it might be internal, but he understood why he might think that, "They've covered there tracks well, it's going to take awhile." Bill rubbed the top bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger.

"Right, let's keep this between the three of us just in case it is a breach inside CTU. Chloe I'm sending Curtis in to Johnson's house I need you to run COM for me. Morris carry on trying to track the source, and for now please cross-check the database for Johnson's information with Iovita's list until Chloe has finished running COM. As soon as you have anything I want to know. I want you too work out of the situation room for now Chloe; one of Curtis' men will have a camera so we'll need that up on one of the screens. I'm going to call Nadia to be in on this also." Bill walked off towards Nadia Yassir's station. Nadia hadn't been at CTU Los Angeles Domestic Unit long she'd been transferred from Detroit after Curtis Manning had become Head of Field Ops. A few people had objected to her working there, but Bill had quickly put a stop to that.

Chloe had started to copy and send the files to Morris' computer. "Do you really think there's someone on the inside?" Morris had turned to Chloe as he asked the question looking slightly worried.

"Probably not Mr. Buchanan just wants to make sure I guess." Chloe said shrugging her shoulders looking bored and back to her screen. It had all finished sending and Morris' computer made a noise when he'd got it, so Chloe made her way to the situation room with her laptop under her arm. Buchanan and Nadia were sat down talking over the pictures and other documents spread out at the top of the table. Bill looked up as Chloe entered the room, and he tried a smile in her direction, but it came out strained. This made Chloe more uncomfortable, although Chloe soon got over it setting her laptop up ready to run COM. A few minutes later Nadia and Bill had finished discussing the pictures and other documentation and Bill turned to Chloe and asked, "You ready?" Chloe turned to Bill and nodded. Chloe pressed a few keys and the sound of Curtis and his men came through on the speakers, the picture from the small camera one of the men had on his helmet came on the screen.

"Curtis," Bill bellowed, "you're going in blind we can't get any coverage of your area, or any schematics of that house or any nearby. Myself, Chloe, and Nadia are here to coordinate and give you whatever else you're going too need."  
"Thanks Bill," Curtis replied in his signature calm tone, "we're all set here. Whenever you want us too go in we're ready." Bill sighed, this needed to be done but he didn't like sending them in like this.

"Alright Curtis," He paused another minute though he knew time was of the essence, "You're ago." He said firmly in an authoritative voice. Over the speakers they could hear Curtis address the rest of the team on COM.

"Alpha team we are a go, I repeat we are a go."

_____________________________________________________________________

It was a dark room with bright television and computer monitors arranged on arms sticking out to make them in a circle type manner. There were also some on the walls surrounding. There was a dark figure visible against the bright screens. Their eyes were flying from the monitors to the door at their right side. They were on edge. The figure had a small, black, flip, cell in their hand, and was taking in hushed urgent tones.

"They've found out that there is a problem with their system, they have somebody trying to fix it now." Silence. "I don't know how long they'll be but it can't be long." Silence. "They've just set up COM their tactical units are in play." Silence. "_Korosho__, __korosho__, __dasvadanya_," They said in Russian before flipping the cell back up and putting it in their pocket. The figure opened the door to their right stepped out, and walked through a few dark corridors. As they came to the end of the corridor they entered a much brighter space, walking up too a chair and sat down at a computer. All of a sudden somebody turned to them saying, "Where were ya?"

"Oh erm, I was just in Tech Room 1 opening another socket." The figure gave a small smile to the other person.

"Ok then." The person walked off, and the figure stared at Bill, Chloe, and Nadia intently in the situation room.


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Bill, Chloe, and Nadia had their eyes fixed on the screen with the feed from the camera which Andrews, one of Curtis' men, had on his helmet. The first pictures, when they got out of the back of the dark van, where of a neighbourhood. For the first few seconds they couldn't see anything because the sun was so strong, but the camera soon readjusted to the light. There were pretty similar houses for as far as they could see. They were medium sized houses that were made out of brown, tightly slatted wood. Most of the houses including the one the TAC team was heading for had knocks out of the wood. This wasn't the nicest of neighbourhoods. All the houses had fair sized ground around them which was covered in brown grass covered in weeds. Twelve men and Cutis had gotten out of the TAC team van. They started to make their way quickly and quietly to the house. Curtis had told them in the van that he wanted two of them at the back, two at either side and the other four with him. They were not to move from their positions whatever happened. If there was anyone in there, they weren't going to escape.

The men quickly made their way to their positions. Curtis and the four other men, one of whom was Andrews, approached the front porch. Curtis signalled for two agents to go to the right of the door, next to the window; which, like the other windows in the house, had black roll-down blinds that blocked out the sun, while Curtis, Andrews, and another agent went to the left of the door where there was no window. Curtis listened; he couldn't see anything or hear anything. He nodded for two of the agents to pick the lock of the door; they had done it in a matter of seconds. The five men quietly entered the dark room with their guns and torches drawn. The torches gave off just enough light for them to see where they where going. The room they stepped into was a medium sized room; it would probably be used as a living room, it had cables running across the dark wooden floor which was full of marks and scratches. The room was pretty empty otherwise with just two flimsy desks and a couple of chairs. On the desks were cables which were still plugged into the wall but had no machines attached. Curtis was now sure that there wasn't anyone here; this place was screaming at him "quick get away". _Had they known they were coming? They couldn't have known_, he thought to himself. One other thing that bothered him was the lack of dust; he was hard pressed to find dust anywhere. Not even his home was like that, well not that his home was that tidy.

Curtis spoke, "Clear." He said for the benefit of CTU.

"Alright Curtis." Chloe replied. Bill wondered if this was right, he was sure it was, but something niggled him in the back of his mind. He stared at Morris, he was starting to think more and more that maybe there was someone on the inside. He just wished Morris would hurry up.

Curtis went for the big, brass, door handle, at the end of the room. He swung the door with force, but the door was heavy so gladly it didn't try and bounce back. One agent went high and Andrews went low, pointing their M4 Carbines through the door. Then Curtis followed them with two agents slowly following some distance behind with their weapons and torches drawn. The room they had entered had a staircase leading up to the next level. In the centre of the room you could see some of the next floor, except that the banister was a white-washed concrete half-wall so it hid part of the next level. Andrews, Curtis, and the other agent made their way into the centre of the room. Curtis looked around, he couldn't see anything, and he was sure it was clear, so he spoke again to CTU, "Clear." As the word left his lips he felt a rush of air pass his neck. As Curtis began to duck down, Andrews and the other agent fell either side of him. Curtis saw one of the gunmen at the top of the stairs and took a shot, but as he did he felt himself start to fall even though he was sure he was pretty low already. He felt something warm and sticky on his neck. Had he just been shot! He started to panic; his hand flew to his neck. He breathed a sigh of relief; the bullet had only grazed his neck. It wasn't too pretty but he'd live.

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Back at CTU the only sound in the situation room was that of bullets being fired. Chloe's eyes were flitting from her laptop to the flat screen hung on the wall. The camera on Andrews' helmet was resting on the floor, and all they could see was Curtis' Kevlar vest.

"What's going on in there?" Bill exclaimed, with worry and anger starting to etch on his face.

"Well I guess it wasn't "_clear_," Chloe replied with her eyes open, busily typing on the keyboard. The first shot had made Chloe jump; she didn't expect it after what Curtis had said. She started to panic when Curtis fell to the floor, but she soon came out of it. She was a bit worried Curtis wouldn't come out of there walking, not that she was all that close with Curtis, but everyone she knew seemed to die recently. "Do you want me to deploy the rest of Alpha team, and medical in?" Chloe asked, not taking her eyes of the screen. Bill paused for a moment and focused on the table. He lowered his eyebrows and replied,

"No, they can't escape. Let's see what happens." He had said it very firmly, he was going to stay authoritative and keep his head.

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Curtis could hear rapid gunfire coming from the side of the banister above the door. He was leaning over the banister shooting with his weapon, and then Curtis realized that the two other TAC team members had their backs up against the wall next to the door keeping out of the way of the flying bullets. He then saw that they had taken out another of the shooters, he had fallen over the banister when they'd shot him and was now lying at Curtis feet. He must have blacked out for a few minutes - well he had hit his head as he'd fallen. Curtis realized he still had his gun in his hand, he tightened his grip on the handle, he only had one chance at this, but he couldn't just let him and the rest of his team be sitting ducks. Curtis got up as quickly as he could, which to his surprise was quite quick. The man leaning over the balcony saw him straight away and dragged his weapon up to fire, but the two other agents, realizing what Curtis was doing as soon as he stirred, quickly came out from under the balcony, and started to shoot. Curtis joined in, the man was too late to shoot at Curtis, he tried but missed with the unsteadiness from already being shot in the arm. He was soon down. Mandelson and Harrison made their way to the other rooms quickly running up the stairs. Curtis, breathing heavily, spoke into his COM unit,

"CTU this is Manning, we have two agents and three hostiles down. We need medical assistance immediately!" Curtis could hear CTU talking in his ear but his attention was on the hostile he shot at the bottom of the stairs. He had taken his gun off him, but he could see his chest moving.

"CTU, one of the hostiles is alive, but is in critical condition. I repeat, a hostile is still alive but in need of immediate medical assistance."

"Got it, Curtis, they're on their way," Chloe said busily tapping on her keyboard and grabbing the phone next to her.

"Thanks Chloe."

"Curtis, this is Bill, have you found anything in the buildingor on any of the hostiles yet?"

"Bill, I haven't searched the hostiles yet, but the rooms I've been in are clear, and I mean really clear."

"Alright Curtis, will the hostile you have be able to talk?"

"I don't know Bill, he's pretty messed up."

"Right thanks Curtis, make sure they bring him straight here, I want him stabilized enough so he can talk, and if you find anything on the hostiles ring me straight away, got it?"

"Yeah I got it Bill. Right I'm going off COM." Just as he took his ear piece out Harrison and Mandelson came up to him, "The house is clear, there's nothing here."

"Right," Curtis said trying to collect his thoughts, the flow of blood had subsided on his neck, but he still felt light-headed. "Err, have you searched the hostiles?"

"Yea we did, except the one at the bottom of the stairs."

"Right good, thanks," Curtis then looked at them, he had been trying to stop the flow of blood in the hostile's lower chest. He was hardly breathing now. "I'm sorry Harrison, I know you were close to Andrews." Harrison was staring at Andrews; he shook his head, swallowed and nodded at Curtis walking outside. Mandelson bent down to help Curtis. Curtis let him take over as he searched him. Curtis rummaged in the left pocket of his black leather jacket, which was quickly turning red. He found a crumpled piece of paper; he quickly tried to flatten it out. It had a map of some sort on it, Curtis didn't know what it was, but he knew Chloe could find out.

"Can you handle this? Medical should be here any second anyway," Curtis said to Mandleson, more a command than a question in the way he said it, though of course Curtis never lost his calm sounding voice.

"Yeah, but you need that neck looking at Agent Manning."

"Yeah I will," Curtis said with a sideways look, half-smiling and nodding, but screwing up his eyebrows. Curtis made his way through the front room and to the outside where the ambulances where pulling up. He took out his flip phone and started to dial.

Chloe started to finish COM, now they were all on their way back to CTU. Bill's cell began to vibrate; he took it out of his pocket as it started to do a three-toned ring. Bill excused himself, opened the door and started to make his way up the stairs to his office. Bill saw who was calling him and waited until he got in his office over-looking the floor. As he answered the phone he saw Amy making her way over to Holly, something wasn't right with those two, but then he heard Curtis' voice.

"Bill."

"Yes, Curtis?"

"We didn't find anything in the house, but we found a schematic of some kind in one of the hostile's pockets."

"Send it straight to Chloe." Curtis made his way over to the van and pulled out a scanner from the laptop compartment.

"I'm sending it now, Bill. That place was wiped clean otherwise; there wasn't even a speck of dust lying around."

Bill cut into Curtis' flow of words. "What's wrong, Curtis?" Bill demanded, he just wanted to get straight to the point.

"Well," he said, still unsure about what Bill was going to think, "I'm sure they were sat there waiting for us. They knew we were coming, right at that point. They just knew it." He hit the side of the dark van with his fist. "They must have someone on the inside," he added troubled; he didn't like to think of that happening, he knew it did and he had seen it first hand, but it never felt good. He then began to feel very light-headed and realized that the wound on his neck had started to bleed steadily again. He looked at the top of his black shirt, which now was turning a dark red.

"I have the same feeling. Someone had blocked the satellite coverage and schematics for six blocks around Johnson's house, that's why we couldn't help you with thermal imaging." Bill sighed heavily, now sat down in his office chair looking at the floor, "It just doesn't feel right."

"I agree with you, Bill."

"Ok keep me posted, Curtis, we need everyone on the same page."

"Copy that."

Bill rested his head in his hands for a moment. They had a viable threat, but they still didn't know what it was. This could be hard.

Holly was sat at her desk still monitoring chatter, she was getting so bored. Surely there was a better use for her time. Amy started to walk towards her desk, Amy hadn't been working at CTU long, this was really her first proper job.

"Holly"

"What is it? I'm busy."

"Well I was monitoring the chatter like Chloe asked me to, and I found something. I'm not sure who I should be giving the report to though?"

"You got something!" Holly blurted out, her eyes going wide. They quickly went back to normal when her eyes settled on the blue CTU folder in Amy's arm. Now this was a golden opportunity to upstage that freak O'Brian, the female one of course. She didn't mind the male one, she could twist him.

"You're supposed to give it to _me_, Amy. I would have thought that even _you _would have figured that out by now," Holly said allowing her face to stop smiling because of the plan in her head, and her face became firm, cold, and intimidating.

"Oh, Ok then, here." Amy passed the blue folder to Holly and then moved as fast as she could in her heals to her desk, back next to Tyler. She took her seat and started to talk to him.

"What's her problem?"

"I don't know she's just like that. Guess you'll just have to get used to it."

She shrugged her shoulders and carried on with her work.

Holly thought she'd better prep herself on what was in the file before she went to Buchanan; she wasn't going to make herself look like a fool again.

Chloe had finished COM now as the team and medical were heading back to CTU. She had moved into the station near Morris so she could more easily share the work with him; they wouldn't be this understaffed anyway if the Internet Protocol Manager had turned up to work today. She really wished he had turned up. Looking at the schematics it looked like a large structure, possibly with large exposed areas, but the schematic wasn't clear enough to tell. The cross-check was running with all the buildings in LA that size.

"Morris, has that list finished yet?" She asked biting her lip and furrowing her eyebrows looking complexed.

"No not yet, I have one small hitch, but I have found Johnson on the list, six times now."

"Well that's great, Morris." Chloe replied slightly excited that they might finally know what they where facing.

"Yeah you would think, but as I said, there's a hitch. What actual arsenal he bought is still encrypted."

"I thought they did all of that at division." She started to screw her face up, and was leaning over his shoulder getting a better look at it, but still sat in her chair.

"Yeah so did I, but obviously they didn't do their job. It shouldn't take me too long now." Morris as usual was still waving his hands around. Chloe's computer beeped signalling that the search had finished.

"Well, that was quick." Morris said shocked as Chloe rolled her chair back. Morris got out of his seat and leaned over her shoulder to look at the monitor, but found himself staring at Chloe's face instead. Chloe didn't realize though, she was so engrossed by the building that the computer had thrown out. It was a schematic of the plaza near to her apartment block; she lived a couple of streets down.

"That's the shopping city near your flat, that can't be the target, you live too close to it," Morris said completely confused, his eyes had stayed on the monitor long enough to realize why Chloe wasn't moving. He started to tap on the keyboard, he soon realized that the search wasn't wrong, that was the target.

"We need to tell Mr. Buchanan," Morris said to Chloe, but she was still staring blankly at the screen.

"Chloe!" Morris said as loud as he could without attracting too much attention. She slowly turned her blank face towards him.  
"Darling," he said then pausing, his face full of concern, "are you alright?" Chloe almost scowling at him replied sharply.

"What is it Morris?"

"You need to tell Mr. Buchanan about that."

"Fine," she said shaking her head in a harassed way, "I'm doing it now." She grabbed the phone next to her computer. She had stopped shaking her head and was getting over the shock. Normally something like that wouldn't have shocked her that much, but when she saw the plaza and its profile come up she couldn't help but remember being chased through it. She had been so scared that they would catch her; she hadn't driven in a while because of that. Since then Morris had driven her to work and back to her apartment, and anywhere else she needed to go. Jack had saved her that time. Jack needed saving this time though. _Is there any hope?_

Chloe quickly snapped out of her thoughts, feeling Morris' eyes burning into her, she punched in the number for the SAC's office. Before the first ring even finished Bill picked up,

"Bill Buchanan."

"It's Chloe, we found a match from the schematic Curtis sent us."

"Send it straight to my system."

"You got it."

"We need to redeploy the TAC teams to the plaza immediately."

"Ok, but Curtis team is just checking in now with one of the hostiles, they just came through the gate."

"Fine then, as soon as they're ready redeploy them, but start to deploy the other teams now. I want them straight down there." Bill put the phone down and made his way down the concrete steps decisively to the head of the bullpen.

"Listen up everyone!" Bill shouted in a firm commanding tone, as everyone stopped what they where doing and turned to listen to him. "We have a new target that we believe Johnson's crew is going to attack very soon. We don't know what attack this is going to be, so I want everyone working this up, ok. I want to know everything about this so we can stop it before it happens." Right now was not the time for slow, sloppy work, and he was making sure that everyone knew that. Just before he turned around he saw Holly making her way up to him.

"What is it, Holly" He was hoping she wasn't coming to complain to him again.

"I've got a report on the chatter we've been monitoring."

"Good what is it?" Bill asked taking the folder off her. Just before she was about to tell him, Bill cut in on her sentence.

"This report is 20 minutes old and the chatter is much older! Why didn't you bring this straight to me?" The more Bill looked angry, the more Holly's defences went up.

"The reason is that Amy Moray did the report, she didn't know who to give it to because Chloe didn't make it clear to her, so she gave it to me."

"And this makes you think you have the right to collect the information and pass it on to me? You should have given it straight to Chloe, and not messed around trying to get her out of the way. You've wasted precious time with this information. We are understaffed right now, but if we weren't I would have to fire you for this. Now as you seem to have read it all tell me what it says."

Holly couldn't believe he'd reacted in that way, but she needed to keep this job so she responded without aggression, "We found what we believe is Johnson or his people asking for help," she paused uncomfortably for a moment, "setting off nuclear bombs in L.A. - today." Holly quickly turned around and went back too her desk.

_____________________________________________________________________

The figure walked into Tech 1 again and pulled out their cell; they had told their superior they needed to check one of the servers. They flipped the black cell up; they had done a good job hiding this from anyone, as personal cell phones were prohibited in CTU. They hit the button to make the call as the figure walked up and down uncomfortably in fear that someone might walk in any moment.

"Yes?" The man answered.

"They know. I delayed the information discreetly for as long as I could."

"So they know about the attack now?"

"Yes they do - the first one anyway."

"Good, this could be a bit of fun." The man paused for a moment in thought. "Do they know about you yet?"

"No I don't think they do. I know they're figuring out that there's someone letting information leak, it shouldn't be too long before the witch-hunt starts."

"Just make sure you don't incriminate yourself, we can't have you leading them back to us just yet."

"I won't Johnson, you know that."

"I told you to call me Taras. I know you won't, but I have to make sure."


	4. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Bill, Chloe, and Nadia, were sat around the conference table in the situation room. Bill and Nadia sat directly facing the television screens whilst Chloe sat more towards the end of the table, as they were expecting a teleconference with the relatively new president, President Wayne Palmer. President Hal Gardener had recently finished the rest of the term left after Presidents Keeler and Logan had both been forced to step down. This was going to be their first teleconference with President W. Palmer and his staff, Karen Hayes and Tom Lenox. Bill was looking forward, as much as possible in the situation, to seeing Karen, he hadn't seen her since he had proposed to her. They had been dating a little under a year now; well Bill took the date of them dating as the same day as he had asked Karen out, and she had come with Homeland Security trying to shut down CTU. With Karen being offered such a great job with Palmers administration Bill couldn't just let their relationship there and then, so he had decided that they needed to make a commitment to each other; he couldn't just lose her, he wanted her to be with him forever. Karen had happily sad yes too Bill, but she wanted to get plans for the wedding before they told everyone.

Bill turned to Chloe, "Have you got the latest estimates ready for the President yet?"

"Yes, the same ones as you have in you hand," Chloe replied scowling with a slight shacking of her head. _What was Mr. Buchanan thinking of course she had it ready, duh! _Chloe thought to herself.

"Good," Bill paused to look back at his sheets, "these estimates aren't great. How are we on NEST and HAZMAT?"

"They should have teams on site in the next five minutes, and out first TAC team will be arriving now," Nadia flowed very matter of fact to Bill.

"Remember to make sure everyone knows to go to the staging area a couple of blocks down. If the bomb isn't there yet we don't want to unnerve Johnson or anybody working with him. We need a clean pick up and disbarment of the bomb." He said with authority but calmly.

He then turned to Chloe who was busily tapping away on her laptop; she was looking at the estimated fallout which had come in a few minutes ago. If it was accurate, which Chloe thought it probably was, she wouldn't be going back to her home ever again, but CTU was thought to be out of the radius of the Plaza which was at least one good thing. All of her belongings and memories would be lost. She hardly spent any time in her apartment anyway, and even less the last year or so since the bomb had been planted in her car. She had been advised to move, but trying to find a new place in Los Angeles on her pay wasn't as easy as that. Chloe looked around for a short time, but she just gave up and bought a new bed instead. Anyhow if they weren't successful in finding and disarming the bomb, she would have no choice but to move to a new place. Suddenly Bill's voice came crashing through her thoughts.

"Chloe," her head filliped up at Bill calling her.

"What?"

"Tell Curtis I need to see him before he heads out to the Plaza."

"Fine, I'm doing it now."

Chloe muttered quickly in reply, picking up the phone up that was on the table. She gave the message to one of the doctors in medical who strongly hinted to Chloe that Curtis was refusing medical assistance and was trying to interrogate the hostile who needed serious medical attention himself. The doctor told Chloe he would gladly pass on the message in hope that Curtis would calm down. Chloe shook her head putting down the receiver imagining what they were doing with Curtis, when the CTU logo disappeared from the screens on the wall and the faces of Tom Lennox, Karen Hayes, and President Wayne Palmer taking his seat in-between the two of them. Karen Hayes gave Bill the smallest of smiles, which managed to lighten Bill's heavy heart slightly.

President Palmer started talking first, "Bill it's nice to see you, I just wish it were under better circumstances. What's going on here!" he exclaimed bewildered and worriedly. "Karen has been telling me of some nuclear threat."

"Mr. President we have reason to believe that terrorists are planning to set off three nuclear bombs in Los Angeles today, we know of the first target which is a plaza," just as Bill was about to carry on President Palmer interrupted. "

"Have you started an evacuation of this area?"

"Well Mr. President we don't think that is the best option in the current situation," again President Palmer interrupted Bill in mid sentence.

"What do you mean Bill? Why aren't we evacuating? You said it yourself there are terrorists trying to set of a nuclear bomb. Are you not listening to yourself?"

"Mr. President with all due respect I am listening clearly and carefully, but there is no way to evacuate people successfully. We don't even know if the bomb is in place yet. If it isn't and we start evacuating we could have the bomb following all those people and have it turn out worse than it already is. We have our teams at the plaza ready to conduct a complete, but discrete sweep of the building, so that if the bomb hasn't be delivered we don't unnerve the deliverer." Wayne Palmer looked unsure, he was battling in his mind and it showed on his face. In that way he reminded Bill of David Palmer. Bill could see Karen trying to weigh all the information up in her mind logically, and after a couple of moments she broke the silence,

"I agree with CTU assessment, there is no way to successfully evacuate now. The way they propose to do it in my opinion is the best way, frankly Mr. President I can see no other way." As Karen spoke she brushed back one of her golden strands of hair away from her face with her left hand. Straight away he saw that Karen had, without telling him, finally put her engagement ring on. Bill was happy to see it on her finger, but then he realized he hadn't told anyone, he quickly glanced at Chloe's face, he knew she had seen it. He'd have to explain later. Wayne moved his head from Karen to Tom Lennox whom looked outraged,

"What do you think Tom?" The battle in President Palmers mind was starting to finish, and everyone could see it, all of them that seemed but Tom,

"Mr. President I really don't see how this can be the best solution to the problem," Tom exclaimed passionately, but with control, "the nuclear bomb could be detonated any second, surely the best course of action is to get the people out of the surrounding arrears, and then start to search the plaza."

"Mr. Lennox we will be starting a discreet search of the plaza as soon as we have the Presidents permission to deal with the situation the way we propose." Bill calmly addressed Tom, though Tom was already starting to wind Bill up, and he had only had that position a short time. Tom was just about to reply when President Palmer spoke,

"Enough," his eyes glancing at Tom as he said it calmly but firmly, "I agree with Bill, I think this is the best course of action. I'm going to want real time updates on this, Bill."

"Of course, Mr. President," Bill replied relived.

"Alright then, goodbye." The screen went dead and the CTU logo came up with it's blue background. Curtis who had been unnoticed whilst waiting outside the door now knocked and came in. The bleeding had subsided greatly while he was in medical and now had a large plaster on his neck. Curtis stood to the side of the door which had closed behind him and looked seriously at Bill.

"Nadia," Bill spoke realizing that Curtis wanted to speak to him alone, "go and start coordinating the teams on the ground at the plaza, make sure everyone is on the same page." "Got it," Nadia said getting out of her seat. Nadia puzzled Chloe how she was so smooth and relaxed in a time of crisis, she was sure Nadia was just putting on a face. Bill then turned to Chloe, "I want yours and Morris' full attention on finding the breach of security on our network, let me know the second you find something," Bill asked when Nadia had shut the door behind her. Chloe made her way toward the door and muttered something about getting on with her own work, she was quite glad Bill had told her to go; it was getting uncomfortable in there.

"Bill, I talked to the hostile we brought in," Bill shook his head at Curtis doing that when he should of just been in medical to get himself sorted out, he said Curtis' name, but Curtis interrupted straight away. "I got him talk a little, but he was drifting in and out of consciousness so it was a bit disjointed, but he said 'Taras told me you'd fall for it.' Then he started to laugh weekly," Curtis said bewilderedly.

Bill walked closer to Curtis with a serious look on his face, "Taras is an alias that Johnson has been known to use. They're playing with us," he said seriously, but with a tone which sounded deep in thought.

Curtis was getting frustrated now, "This isn't a game, Bill. How can they think to play with nuclear bombs! They've already killed two of our men, how many more are they going to try to kill for a game? If there isn't a cause what is this all about?" Bill was slightly taken aback by the loss of Curtis' calm signature tone.

"I'm not saying there isn't a purpose behind this Curtis," Bill corrected him, "but this looks like they are trying to play with us, or trick us." Curtis relaxed a bit more with Bill's manner. Bill continued, "We all need to be alert, and clear headed, nothing clouding our thoughts. Now you need to get your team together and get to the plaza, I need you to run things down there, so be quick." Curtis was about to reply when the phone started ringing, Bill quickly pressed the speaker button.

Before he could say anything a harassed, panicked voice came through the speakers, "Mr. Buchanan, you need to see this," they could almost hear the scowl down the phone.

"I'll be right there, Chloe."

"Fine," she muttered slamming the receiver down. Hearing it go dead Bill turned his head back to face Curtis, the men looking each other in the eye, "Are we clear about this, Curtis?" Curtis knew what Bill was referring to,

"Yeah, we're clear, Bill."

"Good," Bill said firmly patting Curtis on the shoulder. Curtis and Bill made their way through the door, then Bill's stride quickened towards the O'Brians who were both now sat together in the bullpen staring at a monitor.

It was starting to get hot in CTU, it was just the beginning of spring, but the air-con had become faulty and wasn't working to the best of its ability. As he got closer Bill tried to loosen his collar slightly to cool down, but he failed his tie was too tight.

Sighing he stepped up to the bullpen, "What've we got?" Morris' and Chloe's heads spun around instantly at the sound of Bill's voice.

"Mr. Buchanan," Chloe started hopefully, "Morris thinks he's traced the breach." Her head quickly turned back to the monitor.

Bill looked at Morris, "Is it internal?"

Morris replied, "Yes, it's coming from the CTU network," he felt uncomfortable, but he didn't wholly lose his charisma. Bill looked around making sure no on was in hearing range, with the noise in CTU because of the active protocol he decided that they were safe. "I was afraid of this, can you track which station it is?" Bill said with a sombre and tired tone.

"They covered their tracks very, very, well, but not quite well enough," replied looking proud of himself and Chloe whilst speaking with his hands. Chloe tapped a few keys and a box flew onto the screen with a station number and who was logged into the station.

"Oh my goodness," Bill said with a shocked sigh, why hadn't he thought of them, they were acting so strange before. The box Bill read, read

Station: 1109947

IP:

User ID: Miss H. Carlson

Why hadn't he realized, he knew something wasn't right with either Amy or Holly. Of course Amy wasn't a strong enough character to handle being a double agent. Why hadn't he seen it in Holly? Still though something niggled him in the back of his mind.

"We haven't got time for a lock down or to wait for division to get a team down here, what's she working on Chloe?"

"She's doing the logs."

"Chloe when Holly has left the floor, get Taylor to take over her work load, and check her system try to find anything about Johnson on it. Then you need to get on COM, Curtis shouldn't be to long now. Morris,"

"Yes," Morris said almost enthusiastically, but with no smile on his face.

"Carry-on with that list of Iovita's computer, I made a few calls to get over to CTU for an interrogation, the best ETA they've given is two hours, so make sure we have everything, Morris."

Chloe and Morris nodded; Morris looked at Chloe to make sure she was still alright with everything that was going on. He knew she was more used to these things than him, but with the threat of her apartment becoming radioactive he was concerned even more for her, but he could tell she was blocking everything out.

Bill picked up the phone on the desk, he finished his call which only took a minute then made his way over too Holly's station. "Holly I need you to come with me," Bill said to her, she looked up from her computer screen and looked at him a bit confused, "Now, Holly." She got up and followed Bill through the corridors.

"What's going on, Mr. Buchanan?" Holly said getting a uncomfortable why Bill wasn't talking. Bill opened a door to one of the holding rooms for her, but she didn't step in. "Tell me what's going on!" she exclaimed at, Bill.

"What is going on Holly is that you're being arrested," Bill replied sadly as the security guards took hold of her and escorted her inside the holding room and placed her in the chair.

"Mr. Buchanan I haven't done anything! Let me go!" Holly screamed panicking.

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Morris was looking at the list off Iovita's computer, he had run a program on it before, so it was fully decrypted. He didn't know too much about nuclear technology, but he was sure this wasn't right. So he sent the list over to Chloe's computer.

"What you doing, Morris?" Chloe replied annoyed. Morris got out of his chair and leaned over her.

"Now I don't know all that much about nuclear technology, but to me I don't think this looks like enough equipment for three nuclear bombs. It looks to me like a lot of casing, and some explosives. What do you think, Love?"

Chloe looked over the list, "I agree with you, it looks like there is some radioactive material he bought of Iovita, but only enough to make a dirty bomb, not a nuclear. We need to phone Mr. Buchanan," Chloe picked up the phone next to her as Morris took back his seat, "send a copy of Johnson's purchases over to HAZMAT."

"Will do," Morris turned to Chloe with a big smile on his face, "you know I do love you."

Chloe tried not to smile or blush, "Yeah I know, now just do your job." Morris smiled to himself at how self-conscious she looked when he said that.

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Bill was getting frustrated, Holly was denying everything she was almost in teas and was getting very distraught. He was afraid he was going to have to call in Agent Burke to take over the interrogation. He didn't want to let that happen to Holly, but he knew they were running out of options, and he had to get the information. He could never do that job; he thought to himself briefly if his life depended on it could he do it? Then his mind flew to Jack Bauer, he was more than likely enduring inhuman conditions, but he couldn't think about that now, he had a job to do.

Just as he was about to ask Holly another question a security guard came into the room, "You have a phone call, Mr. Buchanan. It's Chloe O'Brian." Bill nodded he gave Holly a hard look, shook his head at her, and walked out of the room picking up the phone on the outside wall.

"Yes, Chloe?"

"Sir, you need to come and look at this! Morris has gone through Iovita's list of Johnson's purchases, and there is no record of anything to make a nuclear bomb. I've sent the list over to HAZMAT to check it out," Chloe rushed her words out panicked.

"I'm coming right now," Bill stated to run down the corridor. _What was going on _he thought to himself? He thought he could feel the tension, but then his phone started ring in his pocket. He slowed down to answer it.

"Yea," he thought it was Chloe or Nadia.

"Bill Buchanan of CTU Los Angles?"

"Yes," Bill was getting a bit suspicious, he usually only got calls like this on his CTU office phone, "who is this?"

"Ah good, Mr. Buchanan, or should I use Bill?"

Bill was getting annoyed with the tone of this mans' voice, he seemed like he was almost jovial, "Who is this?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, did I not introduce myself? You might of heard of me today, my name is Taras or as you might know me Johnson."


	5. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Bill's heart was thumping as he started to run even quicker towards the floor. He ran in front of the bullpen and mouthed to Chloe to track the call. She looked at him giving him a confused scowl, but started the trace.

"Bill," Taras had decided to call him, "you know that there is no point in tracing this call, don't you," he said with a smile. "I mean," he chuckled, "I like playing games, but I don't like to lose that fast," He carried on laughing. Stopping laughing he continued speaking, "Well back to the matter in hand, as your intelligence analysts have probably discovered by now, there is not three nuclear bombs in Los Angeles, there isn't even one."

By now Nadia, Morris, and Chloe were wearing ear pieces listening in to the conversation between Taras and Bill; Chloe had also patched Curtis in who was just arriving at the plaza. Bill looked at Chloe with urgency, but she shook her head, Taras was right, there was no easy way of tracking his signal, she would have to try and track it by its passive signal, though finding anything was doubtful.

"This does not mean however that the people delivering these bombs know this, but hopefully your team has been smart enough to figure out there are in fact three bombs, and one is dirty. The game is for you that they all look exactly the same," they could all hear the joviality in his voice, which disgusted them.

"What is your point here? What on earth do you think you're going to achieve?" Bill passionately asked Johnson.

Johnson's joviality disappeared, "Mr. Buchanan, what I am going to achieve is my point. That point makes me angry, and I don't want to stop having my fun right now. So I think this conversation is over, oh and one last thing," his joviality was back, "I'm sorry to hear what happened to Almeida and Bauer, truly," he added laughing.

The line went dead.

When Chloe heard Jack's name it pierced right through her, how dare he, how dare he even say Jack's name, never mind in that context. He was _her_ Jack; she had to stop herself from thinking that, all of it, she had a job too do. Anyway he wasn't hers, he was Audrey's. Secretly though he was always going to be her Jack, he was one of her best friends, and one of the only ones who didn't seem to die or leave her.

Bill saw the look on Chloe's face; he knew more than Chloe thought he did. He cared about Chloe, he cared about all of his staff, but he had developed a soft spot for Chloe, even with her personality differences. He didn't agree with Karen when she told him that he liked to act like a father to all of the agents especially Chloe, but now thinking that in Karen's short time at CTU maybe she was more observably accurate than he had given her credit for.

"Did we get anything, Chloe?" Bill asked, hoping that she might have thought of something.

Chloe still looked a little shocked, but using a scowl as defence she replied, "No, Sir."

"Right," he sighed collecting his thoughts, "I want to know the connection between Johnson, Almeida, and Bauer now!" Bill said still trying to think of the best thing they could do.

"Already on it," replied Morris staring deeply into the computer screen.

"You getting this, Curtis?" Bill said hoping he was still patched in.

"Yea, Bill."

"Have you a location on the target yet?" Bill asked hopefully.

"Negative, Bill. We have people watching the entrances. We did a discreet sweep, but nothing came up."

"Ok, Curtis. Let me know of any new developments."

Bill turned around to Chloe sighing, "Chloe, phone Burke and get him into Holding Room 3. We need to push Holly harder; we need to find out what she knows. Have you found anything on her station yet?"

"I found a couple of conversation transcripts which I guess are between her and Johnson, but some parts are missing and the names or cell numbers are gone too," Chloe replied still trying to balance COM and sift through Holly's stuff, she had passed some on to Morris, but she wasn't sure if he had started it yet. Chloe picked up the phone to call Burke.

"Morris, is there anything new on the transcripts?" Bill knew Chloe would have told Morris. They were starting to get pretty close again, he thought to himself. Hopefully this time things would work out smoother for them.

"No, it's just him asking her for stuff mostly, like the satellite block, and other stuff, but we knew about them all," Morris replied looking bored as he trolled through information., "Oh, one other thing there's a cell number on here…. erm, 310-597-3781, if I'm right I think that's your cell number." Morris looked up at Bill in a careful but quizzical manner.

"Err," Bill knew Johnson had his number, but this was just too strange for his brain to process quickly, "yea that's my cell number."

"Ok," Morris said his eyebrows raised, he was just glad that Bill hadn't told him off for not fully remembering his number.

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Curtis led a team into the entrance of the plaza. They had jackets on which covered their Kevlars and guns, making them look more like civilians. The four of them split up around the entrance area. Curtis went and sat down at a chair and table, his breathing was quickening, the adrenalin was definitely pumping around his body. He carried on scanning the people coming in and out for someone who looked suspicious, or with the described case, if they were lucky. He saw a refection of light and his eyes quickly looked to where it was coming from. There was a young Caucasian male carrying a case matching the description he had gotten off Chloe. The man was dodging from the obvious cameras around the plaza by hiding behind people; it also helped that he couldn't have been more than 5.5 ft.

"I've got a Caucasian male heading toward the escalators he's carrying a case matching the description. We're in pursuit," Curtis said into his COM unit. He signalled for the agent stood at the bagel stall to follow him. He then heard Chloe's voice in his ear.

"Copy that, Curtis. NEST and HAZMAT are available as soon as you give the word."

"Got it, Chloe," Curtis responded walking a good distance behind the suspect, and with the other agent walking a couple of feet behind him.

"The suspect is making his way up the escalators to the first floor." He was glad to hear the reassurance of the presence of the emergency teams, he didn't want to handle a radioactive bomb by himself, especially when it was going to detonate, but he loved his job, and his country even more. He could feel the fear in him, but he put it to one side, it wasn't going to help him. He couldn't afford to freeze because of fear; he needed to be in full capacity even if it was for his own good alone. He felt the strength come back to him which he was glad about, at least he was on the escalators in that momentary lapse.

They got to the top of the escalators, both Curtis and the other agent could feel their hearts beating wildly with adrenalin. Curtis had seen the suspect turn left at the top, so he went to the left. His eyes began to scan the crowd madly in search of him, he began to panic, he couldn't see the suspect. He quickly turned to the other agent who in turn shook his head at Curtis. Then a quick flash of light caught Curtis' eye, he saw it, the case. The midday sun had caught the case.

"I have a visual on the suspect, he's heading east on the first floor."

Curtis slowed down realizing he was catching up too quickly; he could hear his heart thumping with the waiting for the pounce. The suspect carried on a bit further down the walk way, then he suddenly stopped in the middle of the crowd. He placed the case on the ground and started to walk toward Curtis.

Curtis shouted, "The suspect has dropped the package, move in now, now!" He ran at the suspect who was in turn running at Curtis through the crowd. The suspect didn't see Curtis until the last second when Curtis rugby tackled him to the floor, as teams ran in from all directions. The loud speakers started to play an evacuation tape as the people screamed and rampaged toward the exit. Curtis leaned up off of the hostile, and put cuffs on him, when the hostiles jaw moved violently up. Curtis knew what was happening and quickly turned him over and stuck his hand into the hostile's mouth. He was too late though; the hostile had already swallowed the cyanide that was in a false tooth. Curtis sighed frustrated, pushing the hostile's body over. They didn't need this; they did not have the time.

"We have the package, but the hostile had a cyanide capsule which he managed to take before we could stop him," Curtis sighed looking at the hostile his mouth frothing.

Bill's strong voice came down his ear, "Do we have a status on the bomb, yet?"

Curtis came out of the trance he was in looking at the hostile, and quickly turned his head around watching as NEST crowded around the case.

"Not yet, Bill, the teams are working on it now. I'll get back to you." Curtis bent over watching the teams working on the package, "I need a status report now," he demanded hoping the right person would answer him.

A woman from NEST, whom Curtis recognised as the one in charge, replied. She didn't move from his position or take his eyes off of her job as she replied to him.

"This is not a radioactive device, we are sure of that now, but it is a highly powerful explosive device, which as of now is still armed," her voice was calm, without emotion, and very matter of fact. Curtis could tell though that she was unsurprisingly nervous about being that close to the bomb. Her eyes were focused, but Curtis could see a sliver of fear in her dark, blue eyes. Curtis looked down at her blue NEST jacket, he read her name tag, E. Webb, Curtis had heard of her in quite a few boring meetings in CTU. He hadn't imagined that she'd look anything like she did, no way that attractive; he had pictured an old lady with warts. He guessed that was because the last person he knew called Elva was his next door neighbour when he was a kid. He laughed at himself thinking of something like that in this situation.

They all stood still around the bomb for a few more seconds, the tension weighed heavy on everyone, making the time seem to go slower. Then a sigh of relief escaped from the balding man next to Elva which broke the silence.

Elva got up from the ground and walked toward Curtis,

"Agent Manning," she said sounding almost upbeat.

"Yea," Curtis hoped he was reading the situation right.

"We have successfully disarmed the bomb," a small smile broke out on Elva's face.

"Bill," Curtis was trying not to shout because the silence had seemed so loud before, "did you get that? The bomb has been successfully disarmed, and it wasn't radioactive." All of a sudden Curtis could hear the sounds of CTU in his ear again.

"Good work, Curtis, but there are still two other bombs out there we need you to be working that up. Nadia has just spoken to NEST, and they are assigning Miss Webb to work directly with CTU until this crisis is over. The HAZMAT and NEST teams are going to be on call for when we find a new target, but Webb will be staying with you. Let me know if you find anything new out."

"Got it, thanks, Bill," Curtis shut off his COM unit, and looked over towards where NEST where cleaning up. This was going more interesting with Webb around.

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"Chloe," Bill called as he walked back toward the bullpen, "have you beeped Milo again?"

"Yea, he still hasn't answered, and yes I've called his cell and that's switched off," Chloe responded frustrated, her eyes flickering between Mr. Buchanan and her screen, didn't he realize she was busy, she had a lot of work to do. She had her normal work, all this extra work because of the crisis, and to top it all off the hourlies had just come in. She didn't need Milo to worry about; he was a big boy he could look after himself.

Bill would normally be worried about an agent if they weren't answering any calls, but Milo had been working there only a short time, and this had happened before. If he came in, in a normal state he was going to get a good talking too.

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"You alright, love?" Morris was leaning across the bullpen balancing on the headrest of Chloe's chair.

"Can't you just leave me alone, Morris?"

"As long as you're alright, darling," he answered sarcastically. "You know I would do anything for you, except leave you alone." Morris said smiling at her.

"Fine then, Morris. No I'm not perfectly fine really, I don't really want to go back to my apartment now, and I wish I had left ages ago, but It doesn't look like I have a choice. It's not like I own another ten mansions across Los Angeles, is it? Plus I'm really tired, but I'm shutting this all out because we still have work to do. Are you happy now?" She rushed it all out as fast as she could frowning at him, but she just couldn't help it. _Why did people have to push things?_

"I'm very happy now, love, but you should know that you can stay at my apartment whenever you want, for as long as you want." Morris rolled straight back to the station he was using, he was still working up the connection between Almeida, Bauer, and Johnson.

Did Morris just ask her to, to, to move in with him? Was he kidding, they weren't even properly going out together. Though she really didn't want to go home, she wasn't sure which one was worse. She still loved him; she knew that, she knew she would probably end up back together with him, she knew whatever happened with them that always happened. But right now, she wasn't sure if that's what she wanted to happen.

Morris' shout broke through her thoughts, she thought he had shouted "Got it!" she rolled her chair closer to his as Mr. Buchanan came over followed by Nadia.

"What is it, Morris," Bill asked in a demanding tone.

"I've found the link between Johnson, Bauer, and Almeida. It looks like they were on a deep cover operation about 5 years ago, in which they were trying to bring Johnson down. In the operation Johnson's wife and three children were killed."

"How did that happen?" Bill asked trying to get a grasp on the situation.

"By the report it looks like Jack and Tony were setting up in the building across the road from where Johnson was. When he realized where they were, he started throwing grenades at them. From Jack's comments on the report the only way they thought they would get through it was to return the retaliation by using C4. When they went to look for the bodies the only bodies in the building were that of his wife and three young children."

"Oh my word," Bill said tiredly. "So he's doing this to revenge the death of his family."

"Why is he taking out his revenge on innocent civilians?" Nadia asked Bill slightly antagonistically.

"Tony Almeida is dead, and Jack Bauer is just as good as to Johnson. He's trying to take it out on our field agents; he knew that most of them would die in the attack on his house, but that we would find the schematic for the plaza and clear it of civilians in time. The only people left in there would be field agents. He's blaming us, CTU, for this," he informed her. Nadia was the only one in that small group that this wasn't going to be personal for. She was the only one who hadn't known Tony or Jack. One thing that Bill knew was that Chloe would be wanting to dig up the case for Jack soon. He was just hoping this day would be over before he had to start with Jack's case again. He knew they had done everything they could for him, but Chloe obviously didn't think that was enough. _Is there hope left?_

He was hoping this when the phone went, Chloe picked it up, she listened for a few seconds her face becoming more contorted with every word she heard the person on the other end of the line say.

"Mr. Buchanan," she said uncertainly.

"Yes, Chloe."

"It's James Heller on the line for you."

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	6. Chapter 5

**Warning this chapter does contain major spoilers for season 6.**

Chapter 5

Chloe sat at her station staring up at Bill's office where he had taken the call. What was James Heller phoning here for? They hadn't heard anything of him since he was the Secretary of Defence. She was surprised at Bill's expression it wasn't frustrated or business like as she'd expect from this type of phone call, it was sober and gentle looking. Something wasn't quite right here, she was sure. Bill would tell her later, or she would find out for herself.

"Chloe," the call brought her out of her thoughts. She turned around; she nearly bit his head off with her reply.

"What is it, Taylor?" Taylor seemed mostly unfazed by Chloe's attitude. He just raised his eyebrows at her as he replied.

"You wanted me to take over Holly's work, right?"

"Yea, Taylor, that's why I asked you to do it," she answered him back sarcastically.

Taylor rolled his eyes, "Well I was monitoring the chatter, and I found a lot indicating a radioactive bomb in L.A. in about an hour from now. Two things which I found strange though were the amount of times the phrases, 'taking out the future,' and 'vulnerable,' were used," he looked back at Chloe not looking highly bothered if she answered him back or not.

"Ok, Taylor we need to tell Nadia," she said looking up at Bill who was still on the phone, she'd tell him as soon as he was done.

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Bill put the phone down, his head felt hazy. He reached out for the cup on his desk, the coffee was cold, but he didn't really notice. He did not expect that conversation today, least of all with Heller. He needed something to eat he was feeling light headed, but the current crisis would prevent him for the time being. He decided he needed to call Agent Burke. He hoped Holly had started to talk, they needed the lead. The hostile they had arrested was still in medical, and every time he got an update they seemed less and less hopeful he would pull through. It seemed like the only lead they had was Iovita. She almost seemed like the beginning of this, maybe she would be the end of it; he surely hoped so.

"Burke," Bill heard, he then realized he had the phone in his hand, his head was still hazy.

"Agent Burke, its Bill, has Holly started talking yet?"

"No, Mr. Buchanan, she hasn't. I have started the invasive medical interrogation, but she is just crying and saying she hasn't done anything wrong."

"Ok I'll be there soon," he put the phone down. Holly had never seemed that tough to Bill, a bit spunky yes, but not tough enough to withstand that kind of interrogation. He didn't like this.

Bill headed down to holding. Agent Burke was stood outside the room waiting for Bill, when he got there he asked him for Holly Carlson's file.

"I don't have it," he managed to say, keeping his eyes anywhere but looking at Bills'

"You don't have it? How would you know if she had a weak heart, if you didn't have it, Agent Burke? I think you had better well get it," Bill said his eyes intense, and his tone was heavily threaded with anger.

Bill went into the dark interrogation; he could hear Holly's sobs as soon as he opened the door.

Bill went right up too her, "Holly." She didn't respond her head was drooped down. Her arms were constrained to the chair one was rested on the arm of the chair the other was laid out so that the drip could be easily inserted. Bill found himself cringing at this, but he knew this is what must be done. He tried to rouse her again, "Holly." He lifted her head up with two of his fingers under her chin. The tears were rolling down her face, she looked lost. Someone who was trained to withstand this would not be looking like this, yet her work station told a different story. He seemed to of roused her, she looked up at him dazed.

"I haven't done anything, Mr. … Buchanan. Really I haven't done … what they've said I have," she managed to get out her breath seemed to escape her.

"Holly, you need to tell us what's going on," his voice was stern.

"I, I told you, I haven't done anything. It must have, It must have been someone else." She started to sound like she was about to drift again.

"Who else could it of been, Holly? We're running out of time, you need to tell me right now," he still kept the sternness on his face and in his voice.

She couldn't answer, she started to sob again. Her head flopped in Bill's fingers, her eyelids started to close her eyes loosing focus. Yet the tears carried on rolling down her cheek.

Agent Burke came into the room handing Bill Holly's file. He quickly went to the drip and began to adjust it. Bill soon felt his phone vibrating; he left the room getting his cell out of his pocket. Chloe, he should have guessed. She told him what Taylor had found, Bill felt himself being pulled back to the nucleus, the bullpen.

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DuDu du duuuuu, Chloe picked up the phone, it was security; she had asked them to call her when Milo had come through security. He was just parking up; Chloe calculated that he should be coming into the floor in proximally 6 minutes. Chloe had a hopefully thought, maybe she could get him to watch her station when he came in, and she could grab some coffee. He was of course already two hours late for work, but she could add onto that the time since she had beeped him. He would have no choice then, but to do it for her. She smiled to herself now, she had plan; she really needed a cup of coffee.

Chloe turned around to see Bill making his way back from holding, he looked troubled to her, but they were in crisis mode. Nadia was stood looking at something with Taylor on the outside of the bullpen. As Bill came up to the bullpen they all looked up, except for Morris who seemed too engrossed with getting Iovita's file ready. Right now she seemed like the best lead they had, other than Holly who wasn't talking quick enough for her liking. If Jack were here the threat would be over by now. He could always do it; he always did it, not matter what the cost to himself.

"Have we got any new intel?" Bill asked not really directing it at anyone.

"No Chloe told you everything," Nadia paused staring intensely at Bill, "to me it sounds like an education centre. What do you think?" Nadia hadn't been quite so bold with Bill before; this made the others look at her wide-eyed then straight back to him for a response.

"I think you're probably right, but unless we have some more clarification there isn't much more we can really do. We can look for the mostly highly populated areas in L.A., but that doesn't show us anything."

"What do you mean, Bill?" Nadia said defiantly, but Bill cut straight in not letting her say anything else.

"Nadia these are phrases which lead to hundreds of possibilities there is no way we can find the bomb off of just this," Bill's voice had become gentler. "The best lead we have now is Iovita. Her ETA is about 10 minutes. Right now we need to work up any leads we can find, ok?" Bill asked looking for an onboard response from Nadia.

"Yeah, I'll get on it," she looked disappointed, but more disappointed that they were helpless right now, rather than being upset with Bill.

"Good," Bill moved his attention off of Nadia, "Chloe, are Curtis and the teams heading back here?"

"Yeah there ETA is about 7 minutes out. Curtis is bringing that doctor woman back with him," her head was hanging low with a sulky look on her face. It was obvious she felt uncomfortable with the confrontation being in front of her.

"Ok, I need you to tell Curtis I want him back here when Iovita arrives to head up the interrogation." Chloe nodded picking up the phone.

Morris seemed to see that Mr. Buchanan was leaving heading back up to his office, out of the corner of his eye. Morris quickly got up grabbing some printouts in a blue CTU folder, and rushing to catch up. Bill was nearing the concrete steps when Morris got to him.

"Mr. Buchanan," he was slightly out of breath.

"Yes, Morris, have you got the file ready, yet?"

"Yes, but I need to talk to you about, well something else," Morris' eyes looked pleadingly at Bill.

"Alright, Morris, come up to my office." As Bill started to make his way up the stairs he could see a sheepish Milo quickly taking his seat at his station trying his best to avoid eye-contact with Bill. Bill sighed; he would have to deal with him later.

Morris shut the glass door behind him as Bill took his seat.

"Well, what is it, Morris?" Morris took one of the printouts from the blue folder and presented it to Bill to read.

"Read this, its part of Iovita's list," Morris said ending up with the palms of his gesticulating hands pressed flatly together with his middle fingers tucked under his chin.

Bill had thought that Morris had looked preoccupied before, now he realized why. Lydia Iovita's 'list' ran far above people like Johnson. There where a lot of big fish in her clientele. Bill realized which one Morris was worried about; he now understood why there was a hint of sadness in his eyes. Cheng Zhi; this was not a name that either of them wanted to hear right now.

"He's buying from a known terrorist, Mr. Buchanan. Look at the stuff he's buying, why on earth would Cheng need that stuff? He's even bought fake American special Ops equipment and outfits off of her. There has got to be something here we can use to find Jack."

"Morris," Bills tone of voice was that of some one consoling, but Morris took it the wrong way.

"Don't tell me there is nothing you can do, there has got to be something you can do with this information," his passion was coming through with the gestures of his hands.

"Look I know your trying to do this for Chloe, but right now there is something more the government are going to be concerned about with the Chinese," he said trying to get Morris to calm down, so he could think coherently.

"What do you mean, something else," he screwed up his eyebrows trying to think of what Bill could mean.

"I got a phone call from the ex Secretary of Defence, James Heller before. He told me of some news which hasn't gone public yet, and won't be doing for quite a number of hours if they can keep it that way," Bill sighed. "They believe that Audrey Raines has been involved in a fatal car accident."

Morris looked bewildered, "How can you 'think' that someone has been involved in a fatal car accident?"

"The body that is believed to be hers is in a very bad state from the supposed crash, and is unrecognisable. They would like CTU to send a DNA sample to the Chinese authorities to confirm that that is indeed the body of Audrey Raines. I haven't told anyone else in CTU yet; I just got medical to send them the sample, but didn't make it clear what it was for. I'll make an announcement soon. I want to wait till this hour is up, and we have found the bomb, as I don't want people to become distracted." Morris could hear the catch in Bill's voice, he understood why Bill had used the word 'supposed', this had to do with everything that she was doing to find Jack, and not to do with a lack of driving skills.

"So you're saying the Chinese have killed Audrey?" he looked truly shocked and puzzled.

"It looks that way right now, but you know that will never be proven. The Chinese will send their condolences, and unless we can prove what happened to her, the government will probably thank them for their condolences. They are still refusing to have Jack, they'll never own up about what they've done to Audrey."

"Right, err, ok," Morris' brain was trying to process the information. All of this was happening over Jack Bauer! It was happening just because one man was shot dead by friendly fire. He liked Jack Bauer, he was a good man; they got along alright when he worked at CTU previously, but he never saw in him what other people seemed to see. Least of all Chloe, well, he thought, that was probably because he wasn't a pretty lady.

"I won't say anything about Audrey, but please try and do something to help Jack, before Chloe finds out I haven't told her about any of this sooner. She will try and kill me otherwise," he emphasised the 'kill me' greatly.

Bill offered Morris a weak smile, if anything he did find Morris slightly amusing from time to time.

"I'll see what I can do."

Morris uncomfortably offered back an equally weak smile back, and started back to his station, but Bill stopped him before he got out of the door. He was still sat at his desk and lifted his head up from the folder he had just started to read.

"Morris could you please let Milo know that I need to see him."

Morris gave a slight nod back in Bill's direction. He smiled smugly to himself; Milo was getting called to the headmaster's office.

Morris walked toward Milo still smiling.

"Hey Milo," he said cheerfully

"What is it, Morris?" Milo responded very sharply, putting the burrito he had in his hand down on the desk.

"Well it seems that you've been a bit of a naughty boy, so Mr. Buchanan wants to see you in his office," he tried to put on a serious face, but was giggling to himself, though he just managed to hold it in.

"Shut it, Morris. If you carry on like this I swear I'm going to recommend that you be fired immediately, if you carry on like this today," he waved his finger at Morris as he said it in an aggressive way.

Morris still smiling went to sit back at his desk, as Curtis, Elva, and the rest of the TAC team came onto the floor and headed towards the locker rooms. He then turned back to his screen carrying on with his work when he smelt the distinctive smell of black tea. He then realized how thirsty he really was, as he looked down and saw a black CTU mug full to the brim of black tea placed on his desk. The tea spilled over the sides a little as he turned around knocking into Chloe who was also balancing a cup of coffee in her other had.

"Woops, sorry love, are you ok?" Chloe wiped some of the coffee off of her blouse, and took a sip.

"Yeah I'm ok, just thought we could do with a cup while things had quieted down," she sat down and stared at her computer screen before turning back to Morris. She looked worried.

"I phoned Audrey before, and I can't get an answer. Her phones switched off. I wanted to see how she was doing, she doesn't usually switch her phone off," her face was full of creases expressing her worry and frustration.

"Look she's probably in a meeting, doing her diplomatic thing. Thank you for the tea, darling," he hopped he was a good liar, he really did. He didn't want to upset Chloe that was the last thing he wanted to do, they were finally on good speaking terms, great speaking terms, he did not want to mess this up. He was greatly relived when Chloe shrugged and sat back at her computer. He was out of hot water, at least for now.

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"Ah, Curtis great you're here," Bill said as Curtis came through the door after knocking. He had changed his clothes taking off the Kevlar. Curtis looked down at the floor as he came further into Bill's office. He loved this office, the glass was real nice, a lot like his, but his didn't look down on the floor. He could see Morris staring at Chloe, nothing new there, he laughed to himself. He could also see Elva he had left her at one of the stations so she could get any work done she needed to do.

"Hey, Bill," Curtis said raising his head slightly, "Chloe said Iovita should be here any time."

"Yea that's right I got a call saying that she has just been placed in holding room 5, lets move," he took his glasses off putting them on the desk, grabbed the folder and motioned for Curtis to follow him as he exited his office. "I've got a copy of her file here for you to have a look at. We need that information fast Curtis. We haven't got the luxury of a 12 hour interrogation. See what you think after 3 minutes, then you're going to need to have made a choice of what happens next. Just to let you know, I don't think a Presidential pardon is out of the question here. We need that information whatever the cost. Also I've asked for Burke to stop questioning Holly, and be ready to come in any time you need him. It may take a while with him, but we need this before the times up." They were moving down the dark hallways, toward holding rooms 3-6.

"I know what the cost is Bill, I know how fast we need it. I've got my team on standby so as soon as we have a location we'll be ready to move out." The two men looked each other, knowing what would have to happen next.

They went into the room behind the glass, Bill took a position behind the screens from the security cameras feed. Curtis glanced at the outline of the file, and the stuff he really needed to know for a second. He put his hand on the cold handle and pulled the door open having punched in the code.

As soon as he opened the door to the holding room he looked straight into the dark, blue, pool like, eyes of Lydia Iovita. She sat there with a smile on her face staring back at him. Her dark hair was pulled harshly back from her face in a ponytail. She still had the clothes on from when they must have caught her. The dark top was dusty like she had been in scrub land, and her dark black jeans were torn. She looked like she had tried to fight her way out, she had large scratches on both her arms, and a cut on her cheek which looked like it had just stopped bleeding. Her smile was sickening to Curtis; he gave her a hard look back. When he was right in front of her she tilted her head, and said something to Curtis; that with her background he did not expect.

"You must be," she paused slightly looking unsure of herself, then the smile came back on her face obviously sure of herself again, "Agent Manning and I believe you are here to broke me a deal."

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	7. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

"No, Lydia I'm not here to broke you a deal. I'm here to get you to tell me what I want to know," his eyes were fierce; staring into her confident eyes, they didn't break contact.

"What is it you want to know, Agent Manning?" her Russian accent was still strong. The smile played on her lips, this was an inconvenience, she was sure she could get out of this. She was a lot closer to escaping than she was when they had taken her into custody. Though she managed to hold her own for a while, she simply became outnumbered.

"Your going to tell me where the next bomb is going to go off, _now_!" as he said the word 'now' his fist hit the table. Lydia's eyes stared distastefully at the spot where he had slammed the table, her eyes followed his arm back up too his eyes.

"Am I really, Agent Manning?" Her tone was one of bored amusement, "Why don't you tell me how?"

Curtis felt the heat being raised in the room; he thanked Bill in his head for doing that. He was glad he was wearing a thin short sleeved T-shirt. Unlike Iovita who had a heavy long-sleeved jumper on, he could see the beads of sweat forming on her forehead.

"You're sweating, you're nervous. You know you don't have a choice don't you?" Curtis said. Lydia smirked at him. "You know what, Lydia, why don't I just show you," Curtis went around the table with a fiery look on his face. Lydia quickly got up, but wasn't quick enough to dodge Curtis. He pushed her up against the wall; he had the inside of his arm against her throat pushing her head further back.

"This is how you're going to tell me, Lydia. _Now tell me where is the bomb_," he yelled inches from her face. She flinched momentarily, but her cool smile soon returned. She looked at Curtis like she had already won the battle, and was winning the war. She was cool, calm, and collective; she was a pro who had been playing this game for years and had been preparing for this day throughout those years.

"I want a Presidential pardon, full immunity." The tone of her voice was serious and authoritative, and her amused smile never moved. She sickened Curtis; to her this all seemed like a game.

Curtis pushed harder at her throat with his arm, but then quickly released it knowing that this would do no good. He knew what Bill had said, he knew he had no choice in the matter.

Lydia turned her freed head towards the mirror, her eyes and her sickening smile bore into the people on the other side of the glass. She felt his big hands on her shoulders, they tightened, pushing her onto the metal chair. She slammed down on the chair loudly, glad that the pressure had come off of her shoulders.

Curtis went into the back room steaming. _How could they let her walk free after all the things she had helped bring about today? _He had lost some of his own men, but he knew what Bill was going to say.

Bill could see that Curtis was fuming. He knew Curtis didn't want to hear what he was going to say, but he could see that he already knew what needed to be said. Bill gave Curtis a knowing look, one which conveyed his dismay that Iovita was getting a pardon, and that he thought this was their only way out of this crisis. He could tell Curtis wished he didn't have to accept this, but that there was no other way. Bill cut out any feelings out of his words,

"She's getting a pardon, I've already called President Palmer, and he has agreed to it. On one condition, she tells us where the bomb is now. We're running out of time, she tells us now where the second bomb is, then when the pardon has come through she tells us where the third one is. Otherwise she's spending the rest of her life in jail." His left hand rested on his hip, and his right was pointing at Curtis to emphasis the point.

Curtis wanted to protest, but he saw it in Bill's eyes, there was no other way out of this. Curtis kept eye contact with Bill a little longer, trying to convey what he felt; he could see though that Bill felt the same. Curtis turned and opened the door; his face was stormy as he entered the interrogation room.

Iovita realized she had triumphed; her shoulders fell as she relaxed more. She could withstand an invasive medical interrogation, but she would much rather avoid it.

"Full immunity?" her voice was a mixture of amusement and relief. Curtis slightly nodded at her, the storm still brewing in his face.

"You get it, but first you have to tell me where the bomb is," his voice was surprisingly calm, but deadly serious.

"When do I get the papers?" she herself was for the first time deadly serious.

"When you've told us where the second bomb is then we give you the papers, but then you have no choice but to tell us where the third one is. You are free to go then," he stood there, his arms crossed, his eyes looking down into hers.

"No, that's not acceptable."

"You don't get a choice in what is or isn't acceptable. That is your one and only deal. If you don't tell us now, pretty soon the whole world will know, and you will pay mightily for those dead bodies," his voice and eyes were full of expression.

She didn't break eye contact as her brain worked overtime, trying to figure out her best option, trying to weigh everything up. Curtis saw the change in her eyes as she made a decision on what she was going to do.

"Fine I'll tell you where it is, but I warn you now you'll never make it in time."

"Tell me where it is now."

"1118 Whitehall City St., off the Yellowbrick Boulevard," Curtis' face dropped as she said the address, "or as you probably better know it, Divisional Training Facility, CTU Domestic Branch, L.A." Curtis didn't give Iovita a second glance, though he wanted to. He had to keep reminding himself that the job was the only important thing right now. As quick as he could he tapped in the code to open the door, and went down the hallway like a flash.

He got to the end of the corridor entering the floor he walked hastily over to Elva, who was sat at a station looking slightly lost. She wasn't using the computer as she had no use for it; her eyes were wandering around watching everybody frantically getting on with their work. When her eyes caught his she smiled, not seeing the anxious look in his face at first.

"Elva, we got an address, we got to go," he said before signalling her to follow him as he quickly headed for the car lot. She hurriedly swung her bag over her shoulder and head, and followed him quickly toward another corridor.

Before they got off the floor Curtis saw Bill going over to Chloe at the bullpen. At least the Training Facility would be expecting them now.

As they went down yet another corridor he realized that Elva was having to go twice as fast as him to keep up. He didn't realize how much smaller she was compared to him. He thought about slowing down, but they couldn't waste a second, they had to stop this attack. They pushed open the double doors that led them into the open air car lot. The afternoon sun flooded the dark corridor as they squinted their eyes adjusting to the light. The TAC team were waiting at the door for them. Curtis yelled the address at them as the door shut behind them. The faces of many of the TAC team fell; most of them had been trained there. They knew the people, they knew the stakes, and they weren't about to lose. The team got in the two black Toyotas and drove as fast as they could out onto the road.

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Bill had left Iovita with just the security guards now, he had made the call to the President and they were getting all the papers ready for the pardon. Everyone else was on the floor, which was buzzing with noise and tension. Bill was stood at the bullpen on his third call. The first one had been to the training base to warn them, he had to quickly get off the line though to call division. Division took a bit longer, he had to convince them that he was capable of running this by himself and didn't need any help or as he personally saw it hindrance from some big-shot at division. He was now back on with the ranking agent at the training facility.

"Agent Difranco, this is Bill Buchanan again from CTU L.A."

"Hello, Mr. Buchanan," replied the middle-aged, hispanic American, man. Agent Difranco was very fit, slender, and tall. His olive-toned skin and short black hair gave him a distinguished look. Difranco had worked at CTU Mexico before trying to 'settle down' a bit by taking this job at the training facility.

"Have you evacuated the building yet?"

"Mr. Buchanan, I have initiated a partial evacuation of the building."

"What do you mean you've partially evacuated the building?" Bill quickly interjected.

"Look, Mr. Buchanan, I have a building full of field agents here who don't want to do anything, but look for this bomb. It's on there soil. Know what I mean? The untrained staff and the new recruits have been evacuated, but frankly, Mr. Buchanan we need all the hands we can get. These men and women just want to do their job. I would have thought you of all people would understand that, Mr. Buchanan."

Bill sighed, he knew what Difranco said made sense, but it wasn't going to look too good if this thing went up.

"I hear you; we have a TAC team on route to your location, their ETA is about 15 minutes. With them is a Dr. Webb from NEST, but NEST won't be there for at least another 20 minutes." Bill rubbed the bridge of his nose; he knew that was too long if this was the dirty bomb. "Have you got the description one of our people sent to you of the case we believe the bomb is in?"

"Yea, we have it. The pictures are up on every available screen in the facility. No one has found any thing like it yet. We'll keep searching."

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OUTSIDE CTU DIVISIONAL TRAING FACILITY, LOS ANGLES…

In the L.A. heat the new recruits were lined up on the tarmac. A tall man who was in charge of the untrained staff was yelling out their names one by one; as he ticked them off the list he had on his clipboard.

"Brown?"

"Here, Sir," one of the young female recruits shouted back.

"Clouting?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Samra?" he shouted, but no reply was heard.

"Samra?" he shouted even louder, yet again no reply was heard.

"Sir," a recruit timidly held up his hand. The man in charge nodded at him.

""Samra went about 5 minutes before the evacuation. He was complaining of a migraine, he told me he was going to sign out, Sir."

The man in charge nodded his head at the timid recruit. He hoped Samra was alright, he was one of the best recruits they had had around here for a while. He had worked in the facility for a number of years now, and he had never seen a recruit who was as excellent at field work as Samra.

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Samra was in his car heading south, as fast as he could. He had set the timer on the bomb to give him enough time to get out of there. It was a nuclear bomb for goodness sakes; he was not going to be in the blast zone when it went off. He wasn't about to commit suicide, no way. He was heading for Mexico to lay low for awhile whilst his funds were wired into his Zurich account. He would be 2 million dollars better of by the end of this, and that, like for the past year, was what he was concentrating on.

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Chloe was busy setting up COM whilst juggling what felt like a hundred other different tasks, well six to be exact. Now someone was bugging her, ok they were just calling her name, but she knew it was Taylor, and well that was enough to bug her.

"What is it, Taylor?" she asked abruptly.

"Err, I'm just going to head over to Tech 1 to free up some of the servers, it's getting kind of overloaded," Taylor lifted his eyebrows in wonderment to what he thought was Chloe's 'up tightness.'

"No there not, Taylor, the servers are fine," her head was shaking at him, her face creasing up.

"Err, to me it looks like they are, it's getting kinda slow." He was really irritating her now, but then Milo stuck his nose in.

"Hey why can't he go and check them? We don't need the servers going down now," his eyes were trying to find safe ground in Chloe's eyes. She needed Taylor to do what he was doing, but she also needed to tell Milo something, and really could do with him being in an ok mood. Urgh, she guessed she'd have to let Milo win for once, but this was the last time.

"Fine," she huffed, "go and check the servers, but get Amy to take over what you're doing. I need someone on there, even if it is Amy." She turned quickly and sulked back to her monitor, but not before she caught Morris' eye, who looked at her questioningly. She ignored him; she didn't want to hear what he had to say right now, they all had a lot of work to do.

Now the phone was ringing, she huffed, picked up the phone and placed it in-between her shoulder and ear.

"O'Brian," she answered brusquely, expecting it to be an inside call.

"Hello Agent O'Brian, this is Miss Macy O'Connell from CTU East Coast Division's archives section. I'm returning a call to a…Mr. Buchanan." Chloe felt a bit embarrassed answering the phone so abruptly to someone at division. Why did she do that? She frowned even deeper.

"He's busy right now, we're on high alert," she tried to brush her off. Well she didn't feel that bad, they **were** on high alert.

"He said he wanted this information immediately," Macy persistently pushed.

"Hold on," she said pitting the receiver on the desk. She got out of her chair and moved across the bullpen to the other phone which Bill was using. She tapped him on his shoulder making him turn around. He put his finger up at her signalling for her to wait as he excused himself for a minute to Agent Difranco.

"Yes, Chloe, what is it? Bill asked holding the receiver to his chest.

"Sir, a Miss O'Connell wants to talk to you from the East Coast Division. I told her," Bill didn't let her finish.

"I need you to take that call for me, Chloe. Don't discuss it with anyone else though. Let me know as soon as I've finished, ok?" Chloe started to make a remark about how she had enough of her own work to do without being his PA., when Bill put the receiver back to his ear and turned around. She looked slightly shocked at his back and sulked back to her desk. She let the smile that was welling up in her escape; she liked the fact that Bill trusted her enough to take his calls from district, the only other person who had ever trusted her that much was, well, Jack.

"This is O'Brian; Mr. Buchanan has asked me to take your call as we are on red alert."

"Fine, Agent O'Brian, Mr. Buchanan wanted some files on a Miss Holly Carlson, these records are classified I'll remind you. I'm sending them over to you now."

"Right, thanks," she was trying to keep her concentration on both Macy and what was happening on her monitor.

"If there is anything else you need give me a call back." The line went dead. Chloe put the phone back on the hook and decided to open the file Macy had sent thinking Mr. Buchanan might want an overview when he came of the phone. The first page, to her relief, was an overview that Macy had typed up about the document which stated just the facts.

She started to scan through the page as she carried on with the rest of her work, but she soon found herself stop in her tracks as she came to reading the second paragraph. She could hardly believe she was reading this. This paragraph stated how Holly was transferred from Miami to L.A. branch.

Holly had been accused of selling information to terrorists; the SAC at the Miami branch had put her through a medical interrogation. When they came to look at the evidence properly they had found no evidence which suggested that it was Holly, but the evidence pointed to another member of staff. The case against the other member of staff was proven and they were imprisoned for treason.

Holly though had lost her temper with the SAC and attacked him. She also said she was going to sue CTU. By what Chloe saw it looked like the big shots at division had decided the best way to deal with her was not to fire her for her behaviour, but to get her far enough away from them as possible. Demoting would make others possibly doubt what she said, especially as this had been put in a highly sensitive document.

So Chloe figured that either the people at Miami were very stupid and missed the evidence against her, or Holly was stupid, an easy mark, and had very bad luck. Crazily to Chloe the second one was beginning to seem more plausible. Holly being so obviously the mole didn't make sense. The thought then passed through her mind, did that mean there another mole inside of CTU?

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The security guard in holding room 5 was getting irritated with Iovita. She had been complaining of dehydration since everybody else had left the room in a hurry. He had been ignoring her best he could, even when she started yelling at him for water. She said she was going to vomit if she didn't have any water soon. He felt happier when her words seemed to slow, but then he got a little worried she looked as if she was becoming woozy and unsteady. He still tried his best to ignore her; then he saw her eyes roll back and her body slumped in the chair. She would have been on the floor if she wasn't shackled to the chair. He found himself unable to ignore her anymore; he didn't think to get medical to her, but walked up to her as harshly as he could. He didn't want to look incapable of doing his job by calling in medical unnecessarily. He bent down to lift her head up, but Lydia was quicker, and more vastly trained. She wrapped one of the chains constraining her arm to the chair, around his neck, pinning him to the table. She pulled the chain as tight as she could, till his body stopped moving and went limp.

She had seen him put the key to the chains in his back pocket. She cringingly reached into his back pocket feeling for the key. With effort she retrieved the small key, and inserted it into the lock. She rubbed her wrists and ankles for a second, glad to have them back and free.

The guards body had slumped on the floor, she reached down grabbing his key card and the gun out of his holster. The adrenalin was running through her, but she was a professional she could keep her mind and breathing at a normal pace. The main thought going around her mind though was the hope that the plan they had arranged for such an event was running smoothly. Well she was about to find out.

She swiped the key card on the panel, and the door clicked. Her hand wrapped around it pulling it warily open. A wave of relief swept over her, as they had agreed the security guard on the outside of the door had been reassigned to another part of the building. Suddenly her ears pricked up, she could hear footsteps coming down the corridor, flats she decided - probably a man. She hid in one of the alcoves in the concrete wall, her gun drawn, ready to pounce. The man passed her, and Lydia grabbed him pressing the gun into his head, pushing him up against the wall.

"It's me," the man let out the small cry of injustice.

Lydia loosened her grip slightly turning the man around to face her.

"I've got you what you need," Taylor said in a much calmer voice.

"Good, let me see," Lydia said taking the gun out of his face. Taylor reached into his deep pockets taking out a set of car keys, a cell phone, and a tactical knife. She quickly grabbed them off of him placing the knife in the top of her trousers. She pulled her top over the knife, and put the cell and keys in her pocket.

Her eyes then intensely looked back at him, "Have you done everything else I've asked you to?"

"Yes, the security cameras have been switched off for five minutes, from here up to the underground car lot. You should be able to escape without being tracked."

"Good," she looked down both ends of the corridors to check no one else was around. It was clear. Her eyes returned to his, the gun pointed at him. "Do they suspect you?"

Taylor started to perspire heavier, he knew if he said yes she would kill him now. Gladly for him he didn't think anyone did suspect him, yet. His friendship with Milo and Amy had added a certain level of credibility to his cover. He had created a life for himself here, he'd rather not leave, but the money was what he was here for. He began to brace himself in case she decided to kill him anyway, that was always a danger in this business.

"No they don't."

She lowered her weapon, and took a step back allowing him to pass past her. Taylor relaxed as he walked past her, maybe she trusted him more than he had thought. Suddenly he felt his windpipe being constricted by her powerful arms. They were getting tighter and tighter. He could hardly hear her as she whispered in his ear, "Just relax." He had no choice but to do as she said, as everything went black.

Lydia dropped his limp body to the floor, and made a run for the exit.

There wasn't much time left.

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Curtis and Elva where closing in on the training facility. Even though they were both scared and their adrenalin seemed to be carrying them, they found themselves able to smile whilst talking to each other. In-between the essential stuff of getting COM units in, and giving instructions to their following teams, they managed to find something to talk about other than the attacks.

Ok, so, it was that they were both starving, and were discussing what they wanted to eat. It seemed silly, but Curtis preferred this to any other serious conversation they could be having right now.

Curtis swerved around the corner, and all the smiles vanished as they laid eyes on the training facility at the end of the block. All the buildings around there looked like commercial warehouses, though many of them were, it wasn't as it all seemed. Curtis was driving way over the speed limit; Elva wondered how they were going to stop. She set her eyes on the training facility, in a split second all she could see was a great white light, and one of the loudest bangs she ever heard penetrated her ears.

**Thank you for the reviews esspecially PP :) I really love reading them and would love lots more.**

**If you want to leave me constructive critism please feel free, I'd love to hear what you think!  
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	8. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

CTU seemed to be silent, for once. Everyone was shell-shocked, there eyes staring widely, and some teary at the screen which showed a satellite feed of the training facility, which updated every 5 seconds. When the first shot came up just showing a white light over the area everything and everyone seemed to stop. The normal noises were no longer there, yet an eerie silence seemed to engulf them. When the next shot came up of a cloud of smoke the sounds came rushing back.

Bill shouted Agent Difranco's name one last time into the receiver, though the line was dead. He sadly sighed and regrettably placed the phone on the hook. He could hear Chloe's urgent shouts trying to rouse Curtis on COM. He walked the few steps over to her, "What's happening?"

Her eyes looked panicked and shocked as she turned to face Bill's saddened face,

"I can't raise any of the TAC team; there is a good chance though depending on how close or how powerful the blast was that COM could have gone down" her face looked distressed.

Bill shook his head, "Alright, keep trying though, let me know as soon as you have anything. Nadia," Bill said grabbing her attention. He noticed the single tear that ran down her face, he also could tell she didn't want him to notice, "get HAZMAT and NEST there _now_; tell them five minutes isn't good enough!"

Bill was waiting for the call from division, he thought he might just have five more minutes before they called asking 'how on earth the bomb had gone off.' The thought then flashed through his mind, 'had a dirty bomb really gone off on their watch?' He would have to think that through properly later. Hopefully the call would take its time.

"Morris," Bill called. Morris turned around, Bill was shocked to see Morris' face it looked so open and without sarcasm, Bill had never seen it like that before. "Get a list of all the people who signed in to the training facility today, especially see if anyone logged out a few minutes before the evacuation. Either the hostile is dead, and their body is in that building, or they will be the only one who can't be accounted for."

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Elva squinted her eyes; she opened them to see a brick wall. All of a sudden she remembered they had swerved as the bomb went off, crashing into the small wall separating the two lanes of traffic. She tried to move to see if she was ok, feeling no overwhelming pain she jumped out of the car, as the car door was already open. She realized that hadn't been the best idea as she felt the sharp pain in her neck.

The bomb had gone off, her head was spinning; this wasn't supposed to happen. They were supposed to come and disarm it. This wasn't supposed to happen. All she could see was dust, but she smelt a mix of fire, smoke, and blood.

Curtis!

She hadn't looked to see if he was ok. She raced over to the other side of the badly dented car. She could hear herself screaming his name, but she was in such a state of shock she didn't feel the words coming out of her mouth. She struggled to get the car door to open, with one final big tug it finally opened, before she broke the handle off.

He had his head on the steering wheel. She bent over him to unfasten his seatbelt, but the mechanism was jammed. Remembering he had a knife in his pocket she reached into his dark jeans pocket, and grabbed with a small struggle the HALO knife. Her small slender finger pressed the button, the blade flicked up in a swift motion. She calmed herself not wanting to make any rash movements resulting in a mistake being made. Grabbing the seatbelt she began a sawing motion on it with the blade.

She had nearly cut through when Curtis started to come around. She didn't see his eyes blinking as he tried to find his bearings. It wasn't too long before he realized what had happened, his body shot back with the memory. Elva very nearly cut Curtis as he slammed against the seat. She let out a short scream as she jumped back, the knife firmly in hand which had just cut through the seatbelt. Curtis awkwardly struggled lifting his legs through the lap seatbelt which hadn't fully released. His head was spinning with the realization of what had happened. He got out of the car and walked past Elva, who quickly moved out of the way. Curtis just stood there in silence looking at the horrific sight before him. The dust had settled down somewhat, so he could almost see the full extent of the damage.

The TAC team were spread out attending to the bodies out front, trying their best to discern who could be saved. The once tall building was now reduced to one and a half stories, the wall which was left was jagged, the wires of the building were sticking out of the top of the concrete walls left standing. There was a small fire, but it seemed to be putting itself out.

The thought raced round his mind 'was this dirty?' Before he could think too long about it Elva's voice came crashing through his thoughts.

"Your necks bleeding really heavily, Curtis, you need to let me change the dressing," her voice was shaky, but Curtis didn't pick up on it, he wasn't really listening.

He answered automatically without thinking, "I'm fine I need to find the hostile." He started to walk toward the disaster scene, but Elva put her hand out to block him. The sudden contact made him stop in his tracks.

Their eyes met, "Let me stop the bleeding," unintentionally her voice was almost a whisper, but she couldn't make it any louder with the intensity of the moment. His eyes went to the floor then back up at her emerald green eyes, "Ok." Elva led him back to the car, where he sat sideways in the driver's seat. He realized how heavy the bleeding was when she took off the first dressing, his shoulder was wet with the sticky red fluid, again. She carefully attended to his wound placing a fresh dressing on it out of the first aid box in the car.

"Elva," he said trying to catch her eye as she busily cleaned up his neck. She was so gentle Curtis felt her hand was like a feather.

"Yeah, Curtis," she said trying to concentrate on his wound. She didn't want to look him in the eye, her eyes were tearing up. She really didn't want him to see her crying, but he wasn't continuing so she took the quietest deep breath possible and looked back into his chestnut eyes.

"Elva," he paused trying to conjure together what he was saying, "can you tell without your equipment if the bomb was dirty or not?" He quickly looked away feeling vulnerable that he had let her see how scared he was. Curtis began to sense that she was scared too, so he looked up at her trying to convey the best reassuring look he had.

"If it were a nuclear bomb I would expect to see a mushroom cloud ascending in the sky, which I don't see. So I can assume it was not a nuclear bomb, but we weren't looking for a nuclear bomb anyhow. This doesn't mean the bomb can't be dirty, some dirty bombs do have outward signs where as most do not. It is still very dusty so I couldn't be sure yet, but the bomb could still have lethal......"

"Elva," Curtis couldn't take anymore so he interrupted her. He wondered why her professional opinion made her so longwinded; he guessed it was because she was a scientist. He'd never been too good at science stuff.

Her face dropped from the animation she had gotten into whilst giving her professional opinion, her expression seemed blank. "I don't know, Curtis, I just don't know." Curtis saw the sliver of fear in her eyes again for that moment.

"I need to call CTU," he said trying to forget the fear. Elva nodded trying to finish quicker, applying the tape hurriedly but neatly.

"Your done," her smile was weak but warm, it had a comforting affect on Curtis. She picked up the first aid bag and headed into the dust. Curtis had his flip cell in his hand asking to be put through to Mr. Buchanan.

"Bill, hey it's Curtis."

"Curtis," Bill's shocked and concerned voice came through his ear, "Are you ok? What happened?"

"The car crashed when the bomb went off, but were fine. It's a mess down here it looks like most of the people are dead. If any of them are alive there going to need medical help straight away."

"NEST and medical should be there any minute," Bill closed his eyes for a moment before addressing the main issue, "but we can't let medical in until NEST have checked to see if the area is radioactive." Bill could feel the shear fear, which everyone was trying to hide, weighing on them. "We have teams setting up a perimeter until it's clear."

"Right, Bill thanks," his voice gave away that his head was obviously somewhere else. "Whoever set the bomb off had to have been on the inside, the security was too tight for an obvious hostile to get in."

"Morris is already working on it; he's looking through the logs to see who logged out prior to the evacuation. As soon as we have a list we'll send it to your PDA. Let me know as soon as you hear anything from NEST ok?" Bill's voice became softer and gentle on the last sentence.

"Yeah alright, Bill," the sadness was audible in his voice.

Bill placed the receiver on the hook; he could feel the frown forming on his face at the thought that the bomb could be dirty. The thought that all those people were dead and the rest could be tainted for life all because of one man's ill-founded grudge. Just then a loud siren attacked his ears. His head flew to screens on the walls, they were all red with a large 'L' in the middle.

"Everybody stay calm," Bill shouted out looking around at the scared faces of the staff. He could see the haunted look of a third of them, the thoughts still fresh after this amount of time, remembering the last lock down. All their friends and colleagues that had died, the fact that they had nearly died, they would have died if it hadn't been for Jack Bauer. Why did it recently always seem to be boiling down to Bauer? He could feel the same fear trying to overtake him, but he wouldn't let it; he was the one in charge.

"Chloe, find out where the lockdown was initiated from," he knew the only other way for the lockdown to be initiated without his consent was if someone had tapped in an emergency code.

"It's coming in from the south east corridor outside Iovita's cell," her voice was strained with the panic, Bill could see it in her face. She was trying so hard not to panic and be sadden by the sounds, but all that was coming in her head was the pictures of Edgar and the memory of Jack. This was distracting her by no ends, urgh.

Bill motioned for two of the security men to follow him as most of the field agents were heading to the destroyed training centre. They hurried to the holding room. Bill stopped as his eyes set on Taylor who was propped up against the wall opposite the holding rooms. Bill didn't know whether he should be gentle with him or shout at him for the daze he seemed to be in. He decided the best approach was to be firm with him, especially as his eyes seemed to be coming in and out of focus.

"Taylor, what happened?" Bill crouched down to look him in the eye as best he could.

Taylor was still hazed from the unconsciousness he could feel the dull pain on his head where there was surely a lump. No, all he had to do was lie convincingly while in this state; well that is what he was paid to do wasn't it.

"I...I was walking through the corridor when I saw that the holding room door was open. So I thought I should look inside, I know it was a bit stupid but. Anyway the last thing I remember is looking inside, someone must have hit me over the head. My head does surely hurt anyway," Taylor tried to manage a weak smile, but then realized Buchanan did not look in the smiling mood whatsoever.

Bill shook his head; he just wished Taylor had called security. His head turned to the entrance of the holding room where Iovita was supposed to be, but he didn't see her all he saw was the security guard assigned to her room sprawled out on the floor with a sickening mark on his throat. He could feel the anger and the sense of injustice rise up in him, but knew he must suppress it. He turned back to face Taylor.

"Where's Iovita, Taylor?" Bill asked gently but with a very purposeful tone.

"I don't know, Sir," he had to make this convincing, "When I came back round there was nobody here, and I realized the door was still wide open, so I got up and put in the emergency code," his voice was dumbstruck and his eyes still focusing.

Bill sighed, it could never be easy could it. He took his cell out of his trouser pocket,

"Chloe, Iovita has escaped the holding room, she may still be in the building if she didn't have time to escape before the lockdown. I need you to find her," he was putting his hope in her now.

"Ok, checking security cameras in your area," she sounded exceptionally concentrated on her work. A few seconds went by as she furiously searched through them for any sight of Iovita. Bill was waiting on tenterhooks. "Negative, she isn't there, checking back logs." Bill was glad he had Chloe; she was one of the only analysts who never needed to be asked twice. He turned to face Taylor who was stood up now rubbing his head.

"I'd like to get back on with work now if that's ok with you, Sir," Taylor asked, anxious to get out of there.

"Yeah, that's fine, but get checked out at medical first," Bill still had the cell pressed up against his ear. Taylor nodded his head and stumbled his way to medical.

"Sir, I've got something," Chloe's voice brought Bill's full attention back to the matter in hand.

"What is it?"

"Well, it's more like what I didn't find actually," she said biting her bottom lip, her fingers attacking the keyboard. "A period of five minutes is missing from the security feeds, I'm trying to restore them using the backups." A smile then flitted across her face, "I've got it!" she said her voice becoming much lighter. "The cameras outside of Iovita's holding room had been fully switched off, but the rest were just erased, but I've managed to restore them."

"Great, Chloe," his voice praised her. "What's on them?"

She screwed her lips up watching what had happened simultaneously on fast forward mode. "It's Iovita alright. She left out of the far side car lot exit and got into a black Toyota using a key she had in her hand. She drove up to the exit and," Chloe stopped talking, all Bill could heard was a short sharp breath.

"Chloe," Bill waited for a second, "Chloe, what happened?"

"She shot Joe and the other security guard who man the gates, then she drove left probably heading into the city centre," the catch in her voice was audible, Bill knew that Chloe was friendly with Joe. He also knew that the next thing Chloe said would be free of the emotion she had just revealed, and he was right. "We're searching for the car; I've got the number plate, shouldn't take us too long."

"Alright, that's good, Chloe."

"Mr. Buchanan, err I need to talk to you about that phone call you asked me to take for you from east coast division," she said awkwardly.

"I'll just finish up and I'll be right there."

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Curtis was stood by the CTU vehicle waiting for the analysis from HAZMAT and NEST to finish. His eyes though were on Elva and the TAC team, they were with what seemed to be the only three survivors, who looked like they were at deaths door; he wondered if the tests would be done before they died? Medical were waiting at the outer perimeter ready to drive through as soon as the results were deciphered. Suddenly he could feel his phone vibrating, hopefully a bit of good news he mused to himself.

"Manning," he answered the phone.

"Hello Curtis, its Morris, I've got the list ready to send to your PDA."

"Good, I'm ready to receive it," he didn't think he could have been more ready to focus on who set the bomb off rather than if the bomb was radioactive.

"Well it's hardly a list, rather its one name, Owais Samra. His parents moved from Samaria to America before he was born, one older brother who works for the LAPD, he was training to become a field agent. His record is spotless not even a parking ticket, and the only thing on his family's records is a few debts. He logged out of the building five minutes before the evacuation began. I've got the security tape showing him in a silver Lotus heading south, but after that I lost him."

"Right, thanks Morris," he was glad they had a least a name to this attack, now he had something to concentrate on.

"Sure," the line went dead on Morris' tired voice. As he flipped the phone back Curtis heard his name being called out, he then realized this was at least the second time it had been called.

"Agent Manning," a man in his thirties was calling him dressed in a blue HAZMAT full body suit, but he had the head part hanging down.

"Yes, have you discovered your findings out yet?" Curtis could feel his facial muscles tensing up at the thought of the findings being positive.

"Yes, Agent Manning, the test results are negative," the man said soberly he eyes kept wandering to the carnage behind Curtis.

Curtis let out a sigh of relief, he knew what a cliché it was, but he definately felt like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. He hadn't quite had that feeling before, but now was not the time to be dwelling on it; he knew he had a job to do. He nodded saying thank you to the man asking him to file a report to CTU LA, and he made a run toward his team.

He stood in front of them for a second before addressing them all in a loud voice, "The test results from the bomb have come back negative, it wasn't a dirty bomb it was clean," he could see the look of shocked relief and some of the pain on just about everybody's face. "We have a name for the suspect hostile who set the bomb off, we believe this man to be Owais Samra, a trainee field agent here at the training centre. He left about five minutes before the evacuation." Curtis' eyes were drawn to one man lay on the ground who was coughing next to Elva, he looked as though he was trying to say something. Curtis got down on his hands and knees and lent over the badly injured man, "What are you trying to say?" Curtis said clearly but yet at the same time softly.

"Samra..Samra...he left before to," the man hoarsely said being interrupted by coughing fits, his clipboard still in his hand, "he was going home."

"Back to his parents' house?" Curtis asked still with his head next to the man's mouth.

"No, no, back," his hacking cough was becoming harsher, "back to his own flat, he hasn't registered it yet." Again the coughing took his breath, "It was a friends flat he was now using."

"What was the address?" Curtis had become deeply serious.

"227 Oswald House, S Lake Street," he managed to finish it weakly but without the hacking cough interrupting him.

"We're on the move."

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Bill's head was running overtime listening to what Chloe was telling him about the phone call she had taken from the lady from archives.

"What about the evidence found on Holly's computer, was it planted?"

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was, it was planted in a shared volume after all; I really should have noticed something was wrong. I should have checked it. I mean I did check to see if it was obviously planted, but I could have been more thorough and..."

Bill was becoming fed up of Chloe's rambling, "Chloe!" Bill shook his head trying to think how he was going to fix this. "Are you telling me that we have the wrong person in holding?" Chloe kept her eyes on the floor, embarrassed that she hadn't seen this straight away. "Fine, find who planted the files," Bill said authoritatively but with gentleness, which was only known to Bill.

"Ok, yea, I can do that," she said her eyes coming up to look at Bill. Chloe was about to turn back to her computer when she remembered what Bill had said to her. "Did you want to talk to me about something else?"

Bill knew he needed to say yes, but he didn't feel he could bring himself to do it. The threat was still on and this was far from over, he still needed her at full capacity; although Audrey's death would be coming up on the inter-agency alerts, and no doubt on the news just as quick. He let his mind wander to what Chloe's reaction would be if she heard it off a news anchor; nope, she wouldn't take it well. He could see Morris out of the corner of his eye watching them; he had to do it before Morris did. He had to do it now, he had no other choice.

"Yes, there is Chloe, follow me," he took a gentle hold of her arm and guided her away from her desk.

**Thanks for reading :) Please leave a review it will definelty make my day :) ****I also appreciate constructive criticism **


	9. Chapter 8

**Thought I better say I don't own any of this and never have claimed to.**

**It's been awhile in coming but here it is! :)**

Chapter 8

Bill and Chloe stood in one of the dimly lit hallways away from the prying eyes and ears of the other analysts. Whilst she looked upset about being dragged away from her workstation, Chloe's eyes were eyeing Bill questioning. _They were never going to catch Taras at this rate, the work needed to be done, and she was the one to do it. _Bill shifted his weight around trying to find a comfortable position, after a few seconds he decided to begin.

"Chloe, I'm going to come straight to the point," he paused for a moment taking a deep breath, "the Chinese believe they have found the body of Audrey Raines."

Chloe's eyes ceased to be screwed up and sprang wide open, staring at Bill.

"They've asked me to send over a DNA sample, which of course I've had to comply with," Bill paused and looked at Chloe; she looked as if her brain was trying to figure out a long, complicated mathematic procedure, which without a doubt had Jack Bauer as a main factor, he thought.

Chloe seemed to come back to herself, her defences came up, her eyes screwed up in worry and panic, leaving complex lines on her face.

"What do you mean? She's dead? How did this happen? Audrey was supposed to have phoned me ages ago, and she never did, her phone was switched off," Chloe said as her brain desperately tried to put all the pieces together.

"Audrey was involved in a car accident whilst she was driving."

"You mean they got to her," she bit back. "She told me that 'her presence wasn't being appreciated,' so Cheng killed her," she stated with more of a questioning tone and a slight shake of the head.

"Look, Chloe, you know better than anyone what governments will do to cover for themselves or hide things, after all you did for and with Jack"! Bill sighed tired and worn out. "The truth is we'll probably never know exactly what happened or how much involvement the Chinese government had in her death, but to me it surely looks like they had a lot to do with it. She must have become too much of a threat or an annoyance," Bill shook his head.

"She was getting too close to Jack. She said she thought she might be getting nearer, she obviously was," Chloe was getting excited. "We need to find out where Audrey was looking or who she had talked to and we might be able to find Jack!" her eyes had gone from worry to pleading towards Bill. His heart melted at her eyes, seeing this kind of emotion from her was rare; well not that rare in the case of Jack Bauer. He regretted saying the last sentence, but knew whatever he had said it would have come down to this.

"Chloe, you know there is nothing I or CTU can do right now. We are in active protocol with a major terrorist threatening to strike again after having killed hundreds of our own agents. The Chinese refuse to admit they have Jack, right now there's nothing we can do," he tried to put it as soft and persuasive as possible. Chloe's eyes looked from side to side, but not at him, her lips pressed together then made a frown, and her eyebrows wriggled and furrowed at the same time.

Taking her shoulders back and raising her head a little and with humph attitude she said, "Well maybe I'll go on my own to China."

"What and get killed like Audrey did? You cannot go out there, Chloe." Her shoulders and head fell at his remark.

"I don't have to obey your commands in my own time ..., Sir," she replied sheepishly but still with her pride intact. Bill knew there was no argument anymore about Chloe going to China.

"I know how much you want to get Jack back, and trust me your not the only one, but right now we have an important job to do, Ok?" A sulking face begrudgingly nodded to Bill; she walked off to her workstation. _Is there hope? _ She thought to herself. _Jack I promise you, I'm going to do whatever I can to get you home._

__________________________________________________________________________________

"We're turning onto South Lake Street," Curtis yelled into COM. They had driven so fast they nearly ended up in a police chase until Curtis had gotten Morris to call LAPD and tell them to get off his back.

Elva felt her head had been permanently attached to the headrest since Curtis had turned on the ignition. She was beginning to feel nauseas again, but she had a feeling this wasn't the time to ask him to pull over.

"Rightio," Morris replied in a tone which suggested he was concentrating more on the computer screen right now. Morris was indeed concentrating more on the computer screen, but as soon as he finished speaking he saw Chloe come back into the bullpen, a massive frown engulfing her face. Bill must have told her, she would be so upset, Jack Bauer meant so much to her, what exactly he had a hard time figuring out, but he meant a lot to Chloe. He'd been jealous at first, she seemed to idolise him and do pretty much whatever he said. Jack was just so this, or Jack did this, or Jack is just so, is what he seemed to be hearing just so much, but then he realized that she wasn't going on about him as much as he thought, it was just his envy. They had a special relationship and maybe it was just something he was never going to be able to understand. He decided he would have to find a way to cheer her up.

Morris' attention was then pulled back to the computer by a sound which announced access, legally or not, to the underground parking lot underneath Oswald House. Samra's space was empty; he quickly sped back through the tape to find when his car was last there. There he was leaving the building!

"Samra isn't in his apartment, he left about 5 minutes ago," before Morris realized Chloe was also on COM, "I've got him on a traffic cam heading down onto 8th," she said in an emotionless tone. Morris spun around to see her bringing up a satellite overview of the area. It shouldn't but it always surprised him how quick she was on the uptake.

"Got him," she exclaimed, "he's heading onto the intersection. Sending his co-ordinates to you now."

"Thanks," Curtis said putting his foot further down on the pedal. He heard Elva gasp, leaving her breath behind, she didn't think it was possible for them to go faster.

"5 minutes off," Chloe stated, starting the countdown realizing Curtis wouldn't be looking at his co-ordinates. Chloe had heard Elva's gasp as well, she wouldn't be much help. She wouldn't want to be Dr. Webb though.

"3 minutes." She liked Curtis well enough, but he wasn't anything like Jack. She had worked with Curtis longer, but he played so much to the rule book and most of the time seemed passionless. This did make for a good field agent, sometimes she was surprised that he wasn't already higher up on the ladder, he had no off book behaviour, like her, and he seemed to fit Divisions 'bill.'

"1 minute." Jack was if nothing else full of passion. A "loose cannon" as Division saw it, but he did whatever he saw as right and just, no matter what anyone else thought, and he was usually right.

"You're on top of him Curtis," Chloe finished. Curtis' eyes quickly scanned the busy road, where was he? Where was he? His flitting eyes then landed on the silver lotus.

"We've got him!" Curtis stated calmly, but still with exclamation. His mind started to calculate whether they should or shouldn't follow him, but then the silver lotus dropped onto the highway. This particular highway was popularly known for being the 'quickest way to Mexico.' He wasn't going back to Taras. "Take him," he forcefully said for the benefit of COM.

"Hold on," he said in a low tone to Elva as he swerved the car. She held on for dear life, her nausea increasing, wishing for this experience to end. The big, black, Toyota went at the Lotus head on. Crashing into the back-seat door of the Lotus, the Toyota pushed it into a crash barrier. The air bags inflate das Curtis jumped out of the car, horns bibbing all around him; yanking the door open he pulled out of the car a startled and somewhat scared Owais Samra. Curtis held him by his jacket and pushed him up against the dented car holding his aimed gun in the other hand. He pushed his arm into Owais striking a blow, winding him.

"Where is Taras and Iovita?" Curtis snarled. Samra didn't answer, all that could be heard out of him was adrenalin filled, heavy breathing. "Tell me now," Curtis tone and mannerisms were becoming more and more intimidating.

"I don't know, I don't know. Just let me go alright!" Samra spurted out, his eyes full of panic.

"We know who you are Samra, we know what you've done."

"Look, ok I don't want to be in the fall-out zone any longer, ok?" he said, his breathing still heavy but with urgency and panic intertwining with his words.

"You thought that was a nuclear weapon didn't you? Well so did I, but guess what. It wasn't! It had no nuclear components. I tell you what though there's a dirty bomb due to go off any time, and guess what, without a doubt in my mind your going to be within that fall-out zone," Curtis said deadly seriously. "Possibility is that the radioactive density could be so high, it could be a lethal dosage." Owais looked terrified; Curtis decided he probably hadn't been in this game long. Could it be that his family was seriously strapped for cash and this seemed like a way out of his problems? though his thoughts on why he was doing this weren't something he needed to be concentrating on.

Curtis had him just where he needed him to be, "Unless, that is, you help us stop this and find Taras and Iovita."

"Look, look, ok, ok," Owais said trying to calm himself down as much as he could whilst Curtis and the small, but still present TAC team, who were eyeing him up, had their weapons pointed at him. "I don't know Taras or Iovita." The stares at him got fiercer. "But, but, I was approached by a woman saying she had heard of my services that I had performed before, and would like to use them. "

"What services?" Curtis asked angrily.

"Erm, things like key codes and maps of the building, things like that." Curtis gave him the most disgusted look he possessed. This man had been at this game awhile, his previous thoughts were wrong, he was a full blown traitor and mole. "Anyway, she asked me to take this into work and handed me a silver case telling me not to open it until today. She told me there was a timer that needed to be set, telling me I would get a text off her, then I was to set the timer for 5 minutes. I told her I didn't like what she was telling me. I wanted to know what's in the case. Is this a bomb? I asked her. She told me it was a nuclear bomb. I told her five minutes was not enough time to get out of there, but she said she'd give me 40 minutes. I told her no way I was killing everybody, I'm no suicide person. Then she told me how well it paid, $2,000,000,000." Owais put on more of a serious tone than the slightly animated one he had had, "My family would be debt free and set for life. So I said ok."

Curtis shook his head at him. He disgusted Curtis, but at the same time he had an odd feeling of disappointment in him. "What was this woman's name?"

"It was Lydia," Curtis' eyes widened somewhat, but Samra didn't stop talking. "She said if I was looking for business as soon as that was finished I should call her. I told her I wouldn't be calling her, but she gave me her card and said I would change my mind."

Samra was about to continue but Curtis cut him off, "Wait, you have her cell number?"

"Yeah, I got her cell number. It's in one of my pockets," he started to bring his arms down from behind his head until he heard a click of a safety catch being flipped off.

"Don't even try, Samra. Put your hands back above your head, interlock your fingers," Curtis automatically growled. "You've just killed hundreds of your own, my own, our own agents. Don't think for a second I'm going to let you do things I wouldn't let any other prisoner do, because you know what, your worse. They have a purpose, a cause, what was your cause and purpose for killing your own? Money, you're the lowest of the low," Curtis spat the words at him in utter disgust before he carried on in a more matter of fact tone, losing the emotion which was unusual for him to show. "Now tell me which pocket it's in?"

"My left trouser pocket," he said, his tone timid but for the first time Curtis detected hostility in his voice. Samra moved slowly for Curtis to be able to reach with more ease. He had on black, canvas trousers with pockets sown on in many different places, mandatory to most field and TAC team agents.

As Curtis reached into the pocket he felt what he presumed was a piece of card and another object, a circular, cold, metal object. Curtis screwed his eyes up in wonderment of what the object was. As he brought them out of Owais pocket Owais brought his elbow down into Curtis shoulder, causing Curtis to stumble into him. Owais brought his bound arms down trying to grab the metal object off Curtis. Curtis couldn't see what it was, but he knew he had to keep hold of it, his breathing quickened as he pushed his own elbow up into Owais. Owais bent over coughing and lost his grip on the object. Curtis pushed him back against the car forcefully; he opened his hand slowly revealing the metal, circular object. It was a trigger, the cap was still on, Owais must have wanted to press it down. The thought clicked in Curtis' head that Iovita and Taras would have needed a way to know if he had been captured. He looked at it closer. He didn't think it was for an explosive device, but he'd need to have it checked out.

Samra looked so angry his face could have almost been accused of being red and seething towards Curtis. Curtis rammed the back of his arm into Samra's throat pushing as hard as he could against the car. He put his mouth up to Samra's ear and in the most intimidating tone Curtis possessed he said to him, "Don't you ever try to play me again, because believe me you won't be able to push any trigger ever again if you do," he pushed against his throat hard with his arm again as he released him. "Let's get off the highway, I don't want the traffic noise in the background of the call," he shouted to his team as two TAC team members grabbed Samra and shoved him into the back of their vehicle.

"We're moving people," he shouted to his team as two TAC team members grabbed Samra and shoved him into the back of their vehicle.

Curtis grabbed his cell, "Hey, Bill."

"Curtis, have you got the information out of Samra?" Bill asked, he was stood at an empty station where he was sure no one could overhear him.

Curtis told Bill what had gone on, "We're going to a payphone I saw on the way down, that way it's going to look like he's rethought. He's going to carry out the next job. I need Chloe to get ready to do the trace on the payphone, can she do that?"

"Look, Curtis, we've found out that Holly wasn't the mole. I'll tell you the details later, but all I know is that there's another mole on the floor. I'd feel more comfortable if we had Holly do it, it's her speciality. I can have her ready within 5 minutes."

"If you're sure that the mole is still on the floor, and that Holly has no involvement, then that's ok."

"I'm sure, Curtis," Bill said with all of his assurance and earnestness in his voice.

"Alright, Bill, I'll call you when we're there."

_________________________________________________________________________________

"You alright, love?" Morris said leaning over towards her so no one else could hear. He had noticed the way her lips were curling indicating she was fighting back tears. She turned her chair slowly around to face him, her lips quickly curling and uncurling and her face looking red and puffy.

She breathed in, "Bill told me that Audrey is dead," her voice more breathless than usual.

Morris tried to put on his best surprised yet concerned face, "Oh Darling, that's really not good news. Didn't you just talk to her today," he said whilst shaking his head.

"No I tried to, but I couldn't," Chloe said with more annoyance back in her tone. She then stopped dead in her tracks before she could finish her sentence. She looked into Morris' face and was shocked to see what she did, "You already knew, didn't you, Morris?" To most people her expression would have appeared to be one of boredome, but Morris could see the hurt in the lines in her face.

He was busted; there was simply no other way of putting it. He couldn't say anything, he couldn't actually say anything. All of the times he had done things much worse than this he had been able to talk his way out of it. That was his gift in life, forgetting for a moment his brilliant computer skills, he was a charmer, a talker. Now he couldn't get the words out, for the first time he could remember.

He didn't say anything but instead stayed quiet looking back at her, his eyes did all the talking that he wasn't doing.

"You already knew, didn't you," this time she said it as a statement rather than a question. He could see the disappointment on her features. "You should have told me, Morris." She gave him her best death stare, hopefully that would make him think twice next time. She was so angry with him, how could he have not told her when she was so worried that Audrey hadn't phoned back. She tried to do everything to bite her tongue to stop her thoughts of 'Jack would have told me, he would never keep this from me' from coming out of her mouth.

"Look, Darling, I'm so, so sorry. With the whole Cheng involvement I thought it would be best if Mr. Buchanan told you."

Her eyes darted up from where they were angrily circling the floor, "Cheng, what about Cheng?!"

Morris then took a big gulp.

__________________________________________________________________________________

"Holly," Bill said entering the holding room. Her eyes flew up to him looking at him in disgust. She quickly looked away.

"Holly, look I know you're angry, and that's understandable," Bill said in his most comforting tone, but Holly wouldn't let him finish the whole sentence.

"Understandable, you think it's understandable that I'm angry. Mr. Buchanan you just had me put through a medical torture, I don't think I could be angrier. This time be sure that I'm going to sue you and CTU till not even this stupid room is left standing," she said in a calm but fuming state. Her eyes looked like they were on fire.

"Ok, I do realize how annoyed you are, but at this moment in time your country needs you. I know that's why you signed up in the first place, and this time I'm not messing you around. We have an opportunity to trace Taras and Iovita, and one of your specialities is tracing phone calls. We need you on this, we have only one chance at this and I want our best people on it."

She looked him in the eye seriously, "What if I don't want to do this? I don't have to, do I?"

"No, I'm not going to force you. I'll tell you something though, the phone call is going to take place within the next few minutes, and if you're not the mole it means they're still on the floor."

Holly didn't lose eye contact with Bill; she looked at him intently whilst she weighed up the pros and cons. She knew deep inside that she really had joined up to protect her country, but the bureaucratic rubbish and accusations against her had made her forget the reason why she had ever signed up in the first place. She had made her decision, she felt that maybe something inside her might regret it later.

"I'll do it."

**I hope you enjoyed it I'd love to hear what you think as always, so review!**

**I realize that the last section somewhat mirrors what happens with Nadia, but what happens sounds so text book like to me I thought this would be similar.**


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